Audience insights spark national nursing community

Health disparities. Inequities. Social determinants of health. Could the change the healthcare industry desperately needs lie in the hands of those actively making decisions on the ground floor—nurses? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) thinks so, and we set out to help the foundation give nurses the voice they deserve. The breakthrough to engaging nurses came from deep audience data and research, leading to the driving insight that the only way to engage nurses was through other front-line nurses.

The result was SHIFT, an online community for nurses built on bones-deep authenticity that has been growing for more than four years. The campaign launched in 2020 with a groundbreaking podcast, web content and social content, creating a rich online community for nurses—a place for nurses to gather, share, laugh, think and cry without fear or judgment. The community platform expanded in 2022 with the documentary film Who Cares, featuring Native American nurse Whitney Fear’s fight to heal lives in the Oglala Dakota Nation of South Dakota, home to the lowest life expectancy in the United States.

Two years later, in April 2024, BPD launched the second film for the SHIFT initiative, Everybody’s Work, a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics shaping race in the nursing industry and in healthcare overall. Among other results, the film garnered screening requests from more than 800 healthcare and equity organizations across the U.S., including CMS, the CDC, the Surgeon General’s Public Health Taskforce and the George Washington Carver Museum in Austin.