Dr. Adrianna Nava “fights to ensure that nurses’ voices are heard in health care policy,” said Delmy Piano, Assistant Professor of Practice and Assistant Director of Simmons’ Dotson Bridge and Mentoring Program, when introducing the Dotson’s 2025 hybrid Lectureship Event on February 27.
Though Nava was initially interested in pediatrics, “it was when working in the nursing field that Dr. Nava grasped the importance of addressing the severe racial disparities this country faces in access to [health] care,” Piano recounted.
Over the course of her career, Nava has served in a variety of leadership roles, including Health Policy Fellow for Congressman Xavier Becerra (2009), President of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN, from 2021 to 2024), and Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (2024). Currently, she serves as the Applied Research Scientist for the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Nava holds a BSN from Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing, an MSN from the University of Pennsylvania, an MPA from Harvard University, and a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Nava — the Dotson program’s first Latina guest speaker — delivered a lecture to the Simmons/Greater Boston nursing community entitled “Shaping the Future of Population Health in America: Voices, Values, and Vision.”
“Boston has a special place in my heart,” Nava, who worked and studied in the city for seven years, began. “Today I had the pleasure of meeting the Dotson Scholars … As nurses, we have a lot of talents, and one of them is to shape the future of population health.”
A Personal Leadership Journey
“My journey [into nursing leadership] was actually quite tumultuous,” Nava recounted. “I did not already have a vision, pipeline, or pathway of what I wanted to contribute to the larger society.”
Nava’s first leadership experience was in nursing school when she served as Vice President of the Minority Student Organization. As the only Latina in her program, she focused on how to promote diversity within the larger student body. For instance, she taught entry-level Spanish terms to her fellow students that can be used when interacting with certain patients.
A “big break” in Nava’s leadership trajectory arrived in 2009, when she became a Health Policy Fellow in Washington D.C. and worked with Congressman Xavier Becerra. “This is when the legislation was being drafted for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This was a monumental piece of legislation … and an important stepping stone toward [health] care and access for the communities we serve.”
Working on improving Americans’ health care access struck a personal chord with Nava. As a nursing student, she was uninsured, and back then did not qualify for her parents’ insurance. “When you are uninsured, you are typically not going to a provider’s office. You are not interacting with the health care system … So, [my interest in policy work] stemmed from my passion for expanding health care access.”
Nava performed additional advocacy through NAHN. Here she addressed nursing and health care-related disparities within the Latinx community. “Our mission is to improve the pipeline for Latino students to succeed in nursing [and have more significant leadership roles],” she said. Though Nava’s service was mostly voluntary, working with NAHN constituted a training ground for her leadership development.
Through her diverse educational, professional, and leadership experiences, Nava came to focus on population health. According to the American Journal of Public Health, population health denotes “the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group.” This approach comprises “health outcomes, patterns of health determinants, and policies and interventions.”
Knowing that policy changes can affect health outcomes, Nava counsels nursing students to cultivate a specialization within the nursing field. “Having expertise is a way to get in the door … to begin conversations [about policy] and submit legislation to members of Congress,” she explained.
Population Health: From Research to Advocacy
When sharing her research on population health, Nava underscored the ACA’s pivotal impact on improving health care nationwide. “This was important for me to study, because I wanted to tie the work of policy back to nursing. What can we do as nurses to contribute to this kind of legislation in the future?” For Nava, devising data-driven theoretical models to enable nurses, and the overall discipline of nursing, to enter the policy arena, is a necessary precondition for creating impact.
Concerning the ACA’s legislation, Nava examined to what extent expanded access to health care coverage increased the number of patients who saw primary care and preventative care practitioners. She then studied the patterns among different racial groups. Though Nava found that all groups with expanded access had more interactions with their respective providers, she observed that the Latinx population lagged behind other populations.
“This was an opportunity to address barriers to access and health care among the Latino population,” she said.
In her presentation, Nava emphasized the importance of social drivers of health. For instance, there are numerous existential and material factors — socioeconomic, geographic, and so forth — that can affect how an individual interacts with the health care system.
Nava and her colleagues aim to capture these patterns through data collection and measurement. Accessing and sharing such information plays a crucial role in improving care, especially for patients who are underserved. Moreover, Nava noted that Massachusetts is leading the way on addressing the social drivers of health and improving population health on the state level.
Comprehending the larger context of population health research, Nava found Marie Arana’s book, LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority (Simon & Schuster, 2024), to be a critical resource in understanding and articulating the diversity of Hispanic cultures. Furthermore, these kinds of studies demonstrate how the Latinx population has been underrepresented in positions of leadership and influence within US history.
Nava conveyed to Simmons students that advocacy can be practiced on many different levels — locally, institutionally, statewide, and nationally. In her collaborative and mentoring exchanges with NAHN, nursing students at Emory University (where Nava serves on the faculty), and beyond, Nava witnessed people making a difference by volunteering in their communities, writing op-eds, and educating the youth.
Finding your ‘Change Signature’ Voice
In her foray into the history of nursing activism, Nava realized that there is no unilateral definition of this phenomenon in the extant literature. “But the words advocacy, advocate, and activist came up … mainly due to the rich history that nurses have had in participating in larger societal movements [including women’s suffrage],” she said.
However, Nava found that nurses have been less vocal in recent years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, nurses were afraid they would lose their jobs if they advocated for their needs. Moreover, given the relatively low number of nurses in professional associations and positions of political leadership, Nava realized that she needed to help build additional pipelines for nursing leadership and activism.
Drawing upon a leadership framework developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Leadership Center, Nava explained that effective leadership emerges from visions, values, and voices. For example, establishing a value-driven agenda that is relatable to others helps create more trustworthy and authentic leaders. She also suggests that effective visions should form a logical correspondence between local/institutional issues and broader societal issues.
Nava conveyed the importance of cultivating one’s signature leadership style. “I used to try to mimic or imitate other nurses or leaders I saw and admired. But at some point, you need to cultivate your own style — this is what makes you you.” Specifically future leaders should craft their “change signature.” As she elaborated, “This is like your fingerprint. [Ask yourself] what makes you a unique leader?” For Nava, she knew that she desired to mobilize, unify, and uplift people (particularly nurses and Latinos) around a collective purpose.
Recalling feelings of isolation during her days as the sole Latina nursing student, Nava’s leadership style addresses the issue of belonging and gaps in Latinx leadership.
“On behalf of Hispanic nurses, I want to empower them to make sure they feel like they belong in the larger health care space, and have the tools, resources, and leadership development to pursue the careers that they haven’t necessarily seen themselves or others [in their community] attain,” she said.
Nava now feels that her leadership journey — marked by “self-discovery” and “a search for belonging” — has come full circle.
During the post-lecture Q&A, Nava, the Simmons community, and local nurses discussed cross-organizational collaboration, federal funding for historically underserved populations, and driving policy forward amid a challenging political climate.
The lectureship event concluded with an individual call to action. “Take a moment to reflect on and write [about what your commitment and advocacy] will look like,” Nava requested. “Let’s create a collective vision for change — because transforming health isn’t just an idea, it’s a movement we build together.”