I’m a public health nurse and I have a weekly public radio program, Healthstyles, in New York City. Fifteen years ago, when my kids were preschoolers, there was a local outbreak of head lice, and parents kept asking me to do a show about it. I thought it was a boring topic. They persisted and I did the show.

During that radio show I invited listeners to call in; in radio-speak, “the board lit up.” A mom called and said she’d applied an OTC shampoo for head lice, in three separate applications, to her six-year-old son’s head, but he still had nits and live lice—what should she do? A father reported that he’d applied another OTC  shampoo for head lice to his nine-year-old daughter’s head, wrapped her head in plastic wrap, and let her sleep through the night that way; he asked, “Was that dangerous to do?” Producing this segment opened my eyes to how little we knew about the health effects of such treatments on children. It was a nursing “Aha!” moment: head lice weren’t just a big nuisance, they were a serious public health issue. […]

First off, here’s some (perhaps) startling news: the work you’ll find in our Art of Nursing department might not be by a nurse or even about nursing, although of course it often is. It will somehow pertain to health or health care, and it will—we heartily believe—be worth the reader’s while. So, whether you’re a nurse or not, if you’re thinking about sending us a poem or visual art, why not give it a whirl? (We’ll also consider very short fiction—950 words or less.) As long as your work makes a connection to health or health care, is previously unpublished, and is well made, we’ll consider it happily. […]