Unemployed Nurses While Newborns Die

(WPA poster, image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

According to a new report from Save the Children, "The United States has the highest first-day death rate in the industrialized world. An estimated 11,300 newborn babies die each year in the United States on the day they are born. This is 50 percent more first-day deaths than all other industrialized countries combined." The report also highlights that "Poor and minority groups also suffer higher burdens of prematurity and low birthweight, which likely lead to first-day deaths in the U.S. and elsewhere."

Meanwhile, many new graduate & registered nurses are having difficulty finding nursing jobs. See the CNN article "For nursing jobs, new grads need not apply."    

During the Great Depression, the WPA hired unemployed nurses to provide medical services to low-income families. We don't have a WPA today, but we do have a myriad of health issues and 26 million Americans who would like a full-time job but can't find one. See http://njfac.org/.