Connecticut has a nursing shortage, but Stuart Steinman, MD, MPH ’23, a graduate of the Yale School of Public Health’s Advanced Professional MPH program in Health Policy, is working to address the issue.
Steinman, a former emergency medicine physician who enrolled in the YSPH program after he retired from practicing medicine, is developing a curriculum for Connecticut high school students who are interested in becoming licensed practical nurses.
This focus on the state’s nursing shortage is the latest example of Steinman’s life-long interest in helping to solve health care problems. Early in his career, while he was training as a surgical resident at Boston City Hospital, Steinman organized six health care clinics across the Northeast for farmworkers, who typically earn low pay and are medically underserved.
More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Steinman was among the retired health care workers who volunteered to help their colleagues care for patients with COVID-19. After witnessing the pandemic firsthand, he decided to go back to school and study public health policy.
His passion for health care and social justice drew Steinman to Yale. “I was interested in policy, but Yale had a very robust social justice program,” he said. “So, it was just perfect for me, perfect for my background.”
He credits Mayur Desai, ’94 MPH, ’97 PhD, professor of epidemiology (Chronic Diseases) and director of the Yale School of Public Health’s Advanced Professional MPH program, for his success as an MPH student. “He cared deeply about what he did. He was a great role model,” Steinman said.
Desai has returned the praise, calling Steinman “a terrific example of someone coming to public health as their ‘second act’ in life. Hopefully, he’ll serve as an inspiration to others thinking about what public health can look like for them.”
Addressing CT’s nursing shortage
In its 2020 Workforce Strategic Plan, the CT Governor’s Workforce Council (GWC) estimated that the state will need 3,000 new nurses a year. However, less than 2,000 nurses graduate each year.
Working as a consultant with the GWC, Steinman is developing a high school curriculum for Connecticut high school students so that when students graduate, they will be ready to take the NCLEX-PN exam, which certifies them as a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN).
His plan reaches out to the approximately 20% of Connecticut high school students who say they have no plans after graduation. Steinman believes that LPN work may be a good fit for some of these students, citing the $55,000 average annual salary and the need they would fill in the job market.
The program that he is working on is a first for Connecticut public high schools, and, importantly, is being co-created with support from potential employers. The curriculum will focus on practical skills for the profession, and thus participants will require less on-the-job training afterward, Steinman said.
Another advantage is that graduates will have the opportunity to advance to higher levels of the nursing field after certification. Those who complete this program, he says, will be well suited to move up within the nursing field, with the training preparing them to study to become registered nurses and potentially complete a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN).
Steinman’s Journey
Steinman was 70 years old when he graduated from YSPH in 2023. He entered the Advanced Professional MPH program after working for 38 years in medicine, having retired in 2018.
A native of Great Neck, New York, he attended Tufts University as an undergraduate and Stony Brook University (then SUNY Stony Brook) as a medical student. There, he was mentored by physician and civil rights activist H. Jack Geiger – who believed in addressing the conditions that made people sick, such as poverty and hunger, not just treating their illnesses – and became involved with farmworker organizations.
Steinman said his studies at YSPH gave him the skills he needed to continue his life’s work, helping to bring health care professionals to the places where they are needed, just as he did for farmworkers. It all falls under his life’s mission: to get the best quality health care to everyone who needs it.