The National Black Nurses Association hosted their 30th Annual Institute and Conference at the Hyatt Regency Houston in Houston, Texas, July 24-28. More than 1000 nurses and other health care providers gathered in Houston for the four-day convention. The theme of the convention was “Technology and Health Care Outcomes: Building Skills for the Nursing Science.”
U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige was the keynote speaker at the evening Opening Ceremony. Secretary Paige is “committed to public education and the preparation of teachers to excel in their preparation.” He served for a decade as Dean of the College of Education at Texas Southern University. “This NBNA Conference is so important because we need our patients, the American public and our medical colleagues to understand that nurses seek to continue their education, training and skills to provide quality health care services, all to produce the best health care outcomes”, said NBNA President Dr. Hilda Richards. NBNA continued its tradition of offering state of the art clinical educational presentations and excellent networking opportunities. The Conference offered six, four-hour intensive educational sessions in areas of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, pain management and women’s health. NBNA also hosted a two-hour plenary session on the Human Genome Project and four concurrent workshops on advanced practice nursing, preventive health services, mental health and injury prevention and four concurrent workshops on environmental health, degenerative diseases, occupational health and nursing shortage.

Dr. May Wykle, Dean, School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH was the keynote speaker for the closing session. The National Black Nurses Association represents 150,000 African-American nurses from the USA, Eastern Caribbean and Africa, with 78 chartered chapters nationwide. The NBNA mission is to provide a forum for collective action by African American nurses to “investigate, define and determine what the health care needs of African Americans are and to implement change to make available to African -Americans and other minorities health care commensurate with that of the larger society.”