The 2026 Recipients of the HealthImpact DAISY Nurse Leader Award in Policy
HealthImpact and The DAISY Foundation™ have announced the recipients of their annual DAISY Nurse Leader Awards in Policy. This award honors nurses and nurse-led teams whose work in policy advances compassionate care that improves the health of populations. One individual and three teams were selected by a national panel of healthcare policy experts.
Bonnie Barnes, FAAN, Doctor of Humane Letters (h.c), Co-founder of The DAISY Foundation, “We are so proud to partner with HealthImpact to elevate the nurses who drive compassionate care through policy. These special DAISY Awards align beautifully with DAISY’s mission to say thank you to nurses for caring with their hearts as well as their brains.”
Garrett Chan, PhD, APRN, FAAN, President and CEO of HealthImpact added, “It’s an honor to work with the DAISY Foundation to recognize and celebrate outstanding nurses who improve patient care and population health outcomes through compassionate care policy. We are committed, as DAISY, to acknowledging these incredible nurses and thanking them for their tireless and impactful work.”
The recipients received their awards during the AONL Advocacy Day event held June 2nd in Washington D.C.
INDIVIDUAL RECIPIENT
Tabitha Sikes, Baptist Health Floyd, New Albany, Indiana, was selected for the patient centered solution she developed to bring lifesaving red blood cell exchange (RBCX) services to sickle cell patients who previously had no local healthcare access available. Through visionary leadership and seamless interdisciplinary collaboration, she eliminated long-standing access barriers and shifted care from crises driven to proactive, preventive treatment. The results are a remarkable improvement in outcomes, fewer hospital visits, enhanced patient independence, and restored quality of life for a historically underserved population.
TEAM AWARD RECIPIENTS
Kanchana Ramachandra and the Care Medical AIRwabi Team, Saudi Arabia discovered a critical gap in pain assessment and transformed it into a model of pain management excellence, creating the Pain AIR Cycle Policy that now ensures every child’s comfort is treated with the same urgency as any vital sign. Through collaboration, education and deep empathy they not only improved clinical outcomes but achieved pain assessment rates far above international benchmarks while restoring confidence, dignity, and trust for the pediatric patients and their families. The team created a culture where suffering is never overlooked and where compassion guides every decision.
Aubrey Espiritu and the Care Medical Malaz, Saudi Arabia, LTC Team developed an innovative Communication Board Policy to close a long-standing communication gap by ensuring that every patient’s daily care plan is clear, transparent, and accessible to families and providers alike. The team’s collaborative leadership fostered a culture of openness and accountability, significantly reducing complaints, improving trust, and strengthening partnerships between staff and families. By turning everyday communication into a structured, patient and family centered practice, the team brought dignity, clarity and reassurance to the most vulnerable individuals in their care.
Mohammad Hassan and the Care Medical Malaz, Saudi Arabia LTC Team 
transformed a fragmented system into an organized patient, family centered model that now stands as a benchmark for the region. The team structured multidisciplinary team or “MDT” rounds that have delivered measurable improvements in patient safety, improved communication, reduced unnecessary interventions and increased family trust, demonstrating the powerful impact of unified teamwork. By bringing clarity, dignity and compassion to every patient encounter, the team changed patient care outcomes and the lived experience of care for vulnerable individuals.
RECIPIENTS OF PRIOR YEARS
The 2020 Recipients of the Inaugural HealthImpact DAISY Nurse Leader Award in Policy
The 2023 Recipients of the Inaugural HealthImpact DAISY Nurse Leader Award in Policy
ABOUT THE DAISY FOUNDATION
The DAISY Foundation is a not-for-profit organization, established in memory of J. Patrick Barnes, by members of his family. Patrick died at the age of 33 in late 1999 from complications of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), a little known but not uncommon auto-immune disease. (DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System.) The care Patrick and his family received from Nurses while he was ill inspired the creation of The DAISY Award® for Extraordinary Nurses, an evidenced-based means of providing Nurse recognition and thanking Nurses for making a profound difference in the lives of their patients and patient families.
In addition to the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses, the Foundation expresses gratitude to the nursing profession internationally in over 5,900 healthcare facilities and schools of nursing with recognition programs for nurses wherever they practice, in whatever role they serve, and throughout their careers- from nursing student through lifetime achievement, and through several lines of research grant and evidence-based practice projects funding. More information is available at http://DAISYfoundation.org.
ABOUT HEALTHIMPACT
HealthImpact is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to transforming nursing to advance the health of Californians. Founded in 2001 as the designated state nursing workforce center for California, HealthImpact has a strong and successful history in California and nationally in engaging diverse stakeholders addressing workforce issues, developing solutions, and implementing programs through collaborative effort. Working in partnership with leaders from academic institutions, health care providers that employ RNs, health care associations, funders, policy makers, and workforce development boards, the scope of work has included focused effort addressing the supply, demand, and capability of the current and future nursing workforce.