In May, the Duke University School of Nursing (DUSON), along with the nation’s more than 4.3 million nurses, celebrates National Nurses Month. This annual observance that includes National Nurses Week, May 6-12, is a time to honor the highly-skilled, largest and most trusted workforce in the country — nurses. At DUSON, it is also a time to reflect on the current state of healthcare and how our work is contributing to our new mission of advancing health equity and addressing social determinants of health (SDOH).

The numerous challenges in the U.S. healthcare delivery system are formidable. The number of adults living with chronic disease today continues to rise, just as life expectancy is starting to fall. Persistent health inequities impacting access to and quality of care only compound these challenges, and are projected to cost our already unsustainably costly health care system $3 trillion by 2040. As providers, researchers, and educators, rethinking our understanding of SDOH to mitigate costly health inequities is critical. Here are some of the ways DUSON nurses are meeting these challenges: