The health equity engagement activity explores how the social determinants of health affect health equity.
Cultivating understanding, empathy and sensitivity toward nurses’ and patients’ lived experiences are at the heart of the health equity learning opportunities at Emergency Nursing 2026 in Phoenix.
“It’s being mindful about what you’ve experienced yourself as a health care professional, and thinking about what your patients go through as well,” said Tisha Thompson, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, CEN, NE-BC, chair of the ENA Health Equity and Access Advisory Council.
Safe Space
Thompson will be on hand to open the session “No One Gets Left Behind: Making the Invisible – VISIBLE!” featuring panelists from the Health Equity and Access Advisory Council. They’ll talk about their experiences being a person of color, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a person with a disability and someone whose first language isn’t English through a series of video vignettes before opening the panel up to questions and discussion.
Tisha Thompson, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, CEN, NE-BC
“The committee has done a lot of work around caring for these different populations. This time, we want to really focus on the nurses’ experiences of health equity,” said Cheryl Riwitis, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, CEN, CFRN, TCRN, FAEN, session moderator and Health Equity and Access Advisory Council member. “We really wanted some different perspectives of how this impacts us as nurses.”
Thompson and Riwitis hope the session will elicit a dialogue among people in attendance not only about their own experiences but what their patients might experience as well.
“We want to create a space where people can know that we recognize these things are happening,” Thompson said. “We want you to let our patients know that we see them as well, that they are not invisible.”
Nonmedical Factors
Cheryl Riwitis, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, CEN, CFRN, TCRN, FAEN
Attendees can also tap into that sense of empathy and understanding at the health equity engagement activity at the ENA Experience booth in the Experience Hall. The interactive activity invites them to think about the ways they and their patients have experienced social determinants of health, such as whether they have enough food to eat, have a disability, live in poverty and other factors that affect their health.
Twenty-four social determinants of health will be listed on a large wall. Attendees can place three blue stickers on factors they’ve experienced the most in the workplace and three green stickers on factors their patients have experienced the most. A QR code will also be available for attendees to add their responses without using the stickers.
The aim is to help attendees recognize biases, work through challenging ideas, and open up a dialogue both with each other and within themselves.
Aaron Coats
The activity will also include a take-home element for the first time, too, in the form of a social determinants of health bingo card featuring barriers like immigration status, unstable housing, lack of child care, religious affiliation and exposure to violence. Attendees can check off everything they’ve experienced in their own lives.
“It’s a self-reflective exercise so folks can say, ‘I’ve experienced some of these things in my role. Let me be more empathetic when I see patients experiencing these things on what could be theirworst day,’” said ENA Senior Marketing Specialist Aaron Coats, who is facilitating the activity.