Nursing the Nation

"It doesn't cut anyone's benefits." That's the talking point — and it's technically true. In the launch of our latest six-part series on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA, now Public Law 119-21), Jamie and Melissa explain how a law that cuts no covered service is still projected to leave ten million more people uninsured, and why the savings depend on people losing coverage they're still eligi...

It's the first Shout Out Saturday of Season Two, and Jamie and Melissa Anne spotlight nurse practitioner and epidemiologist Dena Bushman. A CDC-trained medical epidemiologist and lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service, Bushman built her career inside federal public health—until she was rostered to deploy to an ICE detention facility in Texas, with Guantánamo Bay to follow. In Janua...

A professional nursing organization recently drew a line between policy and politics, and said nurses belong on one side of it. We disagree, and this replay explains why. In this episode, Jamie and Melissa Anne provide an update to the conversation that started the show: what led each of us into nursing, and why nursing knowledge belongs in the public square. Jamie makes the case that politics is...

We're taking a short hiatus — and using it to bring back the episode where we talk about how it all started. We've had a lot happen since we launched Nursing the Nation . Melissa Anne defended her dissertation in August and started a full-time assistant professor position a week later. Jamie has entered the dissertation phase — plus several academic writing projects, clinical presentation preparat...

On July 15, 2026, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced — in a video captioned "The High-T Department of War" — that all active-duty service members thirty and older will be screened annually for testosterone deficiency, with testosterone replacement therapy offered to those who screen low. The stated goal: keeping troops at the "leading edge of lethality." This week, Melissa Anne and Jamie...

Dolly Parton has died at 80, and the tributes have poured in from every corner of American life — country music, film, business, Appalachia. We wanted to write a different kind of tribute. As nurse scientists, Jamie and Melissa Anne dig into not just what made Dolly's philanthropy extraordinary, but why it worked. From the 1988 Dollywood Foundation's Buddy Program (which cut participating-class dr...

Cyclospora. Salmonella. Listeria. E. coli. It has felt like a relentless summer of foodborne illness headlines. So Jamie and Melissa Anne went looking for the actual data. In this episode, we trace how an outbreak is actually discovered. We break down which federal agency picks up which food (USDA for meat, FDA for produce and packaged goods), and we hit the fact that shocked us: nearly all food r...

This week, Dr. Victoria Soltis-Jarrett returns to Nursing the Nation to explain integrated behavioral health care — what it actually is, what it isn't, and why "we'll refer you two doors down" doesn't count. Dr. Soltis-Jarrett is the Carol Morde Ross Distinguished Professor of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a newly inducted inaugural Fellow...

This week we're deviating from the norm, because as this episode airs, Melissa has defended her dissertation and is officially Dr. Melissa Anne DuBois. To mark the occasion, Jamie went and got nerdy about where the PhD actually comes from — and it turns out the history is contested, medieval, and extremely useful the next time someone tells you nurses shouldn't use the title "doctor." Nursing PhD...

An executive order from July 2025 calls street homelessness a psychiatric problem and prescribes involuntary commitment. In this episode, Jamie and Melissa break down EO 14321 Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets. They discuss what the HUD data actually shows, how grant money becomes leverage, why defunding harm reduction and Housing First backfires, and what the June 2026 DOJ memo narro...

The President calls TrumpRx "the most transformative healthcare initiative of all time." So what does it actually do? In this episode, Jamie and Melissa pull apart the branded drug-discount rollout — and find a website that links you to manufacturer coupons, not a pharmacy. To understand why the same generic pill can cost $4 at one store and $19 at another, they follow the money through pharmacy b...

We close our four-part nursing analysis of the Make Our Children Healthy Again MAHA Strategy Report with its thinnest pillar on paper — and its most consequential in practice. Pillar 4 rests on one word every nurse knows intimately: voluntary . Jamie and Melissa unpack the retreat from a promised food-dye ban to a toothless voluntary tracker, the "precision agriculture" drone promises that have no...

In the second half of our deep dive into the MAHA Strategy Report's third pillar, Jamie and Melissa take on pediatric mental health, screen time, vaping, substance use, and the report's favorite move: naming a youth crisis and then handing the responsibility to individual kids and families while quietly cutting every structural support that might actually help. We unpack what the research really s...

HHS calls the third pillar of the MAHA strategy "Increasing Public Awareness and Knowledge"—a plan to empower parents and restore trust in public health. Jamie and Melissa Anne read the fine print and find the bootstraps myth woven throughout: sixteen-plus awareness campaigns built almost entirely on individual behavior change, with the upstream social determinants of health conspicuously missing....

The MAHA Commission's September 2025 Strategy Report laid out four pillars for tackling childhood chronic disease. Today Jamie and Melissa Anne are digging into Pillar 2: "Realigning Incentives" — a sprawling grab-bag of food labeling, sunscreen modernization, dietary guidelines, synthetic dye phase-outs, and the still-undefined "ultra-processed food." What's actually been accomplished? We unpack...

Season 2 is here , and we're opening with a topic that has been a frequent flyer: the MAHA Strategy Report. If you followed our MOCHA series in Season 1, you already know the diagnosis — poor diet, chemical exposures, physical inactivity, and overmedicalization. Now the MAHA Commission is back with their so-called playbook. Today we're putting Pillar One — Advancing Research — under the nursing mi...

The Department of Education just finalized the RISE Rule — and graduate nursing still isn't a "professional degree." What does that mean? It means nursing students starting after July 1, 2026 can borrow less than half of what med students, law students, and even chiropractic students can access in federal loans. The Department says it's just a classification issue. Jamie says it's misogyny in a bu...

The U.S. and Israel have launched massive strikes against Iran. Cable news is debating carrier groups and regime change. We're checking the vitals of the people right here at home. War doesn't just happen "over there." In this bonus episode, Jamie and Melissa Anne apply the nursing lens to the Third Gulf War's homefront realities — from a spike in oil prices and the financial toxicity hitting Amer...

Today's bonus episode features a discussion based on the Department of Education's final proposed rule that will EXCLUDE graduate level nursing education from the professional federal student loan limits. Jamie and Melissa Anne discuss how this impacts nurses, patients, and the healthcare system at large with Dr. Victoria Soltis-Jarrett, while providing context to what exactly graduate level nursi...

Jamie and Melissa Anne address the escalating violence and the tragic loss of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a VA ICU nurse who was killed by ICE agents on Saturday, January 24, 2026, in Minnesota. Speaking not just as nurses, but as witnesses to the "best and worst of humanity," they deliver an urgent message to those who have previously remained silent or supported the current administration’s immigration...

In this episode, Jamie and Melissa Anne unpack reports of a CDC-funded study in Guinea-Bissau that would randomize newborns to receive the Hepatitis B vaccine at birth versus a delayed dose, which is framed by RFK Jr. as “gold standard science.” They break down what decades of evidence say about Hep B transmission and why the birth dose matters, then dig into the ethical red flags of testing delay...

We’re excited to share a special bonus episode today. Jamie and Melissa recently joined host James Hodgson on  Humanism Now , a podcast that explores how compassion, curiosity, equality, and freedom can help us build a fairer and more humane world. The show showcases the values and applications of a Humanist worldview. It's not anti-religion — it’s pro-human — and each week James speaks with...

As Season One of Nursing the Nation wraps up, Jamie and Melissa Anne sit down for a lighter, reflective conversation about the surprises, challenges, and insights that shaped their first year behind the mic. From discovering that both the Senate and House have nursing caucuses (who knew?) to unexpected twists in health policy history, the season taught them just as much as it informed listeners. T...

Our last Shout Out this season is to the esteemed nurse Ann Burgess. Ann Burgess is a doctorally prepared nurse scientist that is internationally recognized for her pioneering work in forensic science. Even if you have not heard her by name, you are likely to have known of her work. Did you watch the Netflix series Mindhunter ? She is depicted as Dr. Wendy Carr (and we explain why). Dr. Burgess al...

In the final installment of our MOCHA REDUX series, Jamie and Melissa Anne break down one of the most contentious sections of the MAHA report: gender-affirming care. This episode explores how the Trump administration and MAHA frame gender-affirming care as “child chemical and surgical mutilation”. This is a phrase echoed in a 2025 CMS press release that warned hospitals about “irreversible” interv...