National Nurses United

Profile:1 2/8/08 2:38 PM Page 18 Connections and Layover World traveler and CNA/NNOC Board of Directors member lauri hoagland has always made the connection between social justice and healthcare. by e ri ka larson L auri hoagland remembers very well the year her life changed. At age 18, she enrolled in an exchange program, intending to study psychobiology at University of California Santa Cruz upon her return home. She was sent to Högfors, a city in central Sweden, where her host parents, a family physician and a physical therapist, encouraged her to help out at their practice. "That, for me, planted the seed of working in healthcare, in clinics, and for social change," says Hoagland, now a registered nurse practitioner. Impressed by Sweden's national medical system, she maintains that her time in Högfors was crucial in cultivating her interest in the American single-payer movement. Her subsequent world travels have been equally important in maintaining and strengthening that interest. Like many seasoned travelers, Hoagland has found herself seeking out medical attention in a foreign country on more than one occasion. "I'm always so thrilled to walk into a clinic in another country and be taken care of efficiently without money." Although it was her Swedish sojourn that fully articulated her passion into a career path, Hoagland had always taken an interest in social justice and healthcare. Growing up in then semi-rural Santa Rosa, Calif., Hoagland would read with interest the biographies of nurses such as Clara Barton, who agitated for public health improvement. As a teen, Hoagland worked for the Sonoma County Department of Public Health. "I have never separated healthcare from activism," Hoagland says. "Healthcare is all about creating improved circumstances for the poor." Upon returning from Sweden, Hoagland attended Humboldt State University, earning her BSN in 1981. Four short years later, she had earned her nurse practitioner's degree from the University of California San Francisco. She now practices at Kaiser Permanente's clinic in Napa, Calif., where she has lived for the past 27 years. It almost seems fated that someone as passionate as Hoagland would eventually end up at CNA/NNOC. In 1996, Hoagland was dissatisfied with the way Kaiser Permanente delivered care and was making regular trips to Kaiser headquarters in Oakland to participate in groups where, she said, "it felt like nothing ever changed." One night, she attended a late-night bargaining session at CNA. "It was an epiphany," she says. "I realized CNA was a group where I had power and could help make changes. I decided then and there to be involved." Hoagland applied for the Quality Liaison program in 1998, and her increasing involvement with the Kaiser division pulled her deeper into the CNA leadership. "It was quite an education," she says of the Kaiser divi18 REGISTERED NURSE sion. "I had the opportunity to travel to many Kaiser clinics all around Northern California and see what the issues and struggles were for my fellow Kaiser nurses." "There is almost a natural activism that comes out of working at Kaiser," Hoagland says, citing the Professional Practice Committees and the Quality Liaison program. She also believes that the serendipitous location of Kaiser's headquarters, less than a block from the CNA/NNOC headquarters in Oakland, makes it easy for Kaiser nurses to get involved with the union. Most importantly, however, Kaiser Division Director Jim Ryder "is phenomenal at supporting nurses." Finding an outlet for her organizational creativity at CNA/NNOC, Hoagland was shortly involved in her local Region 9 structure, serv- W W W. C A L N U R S E S . O R G JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2008

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