Always Relentless-Robin Cogan Never Stopped Calling Us to Care, Speak, and Vote

Like Robin’s gift for writing and advocacy, guest bloggers Donna Gaffney and Teri Mills have beautifully captured her ethical soul, especially her deep commitment to voting, advocacy, and empowering nurses to use their voices to create meaningful change.

Always Relentless: Robin Cogan Never Stopped Calling Us to Care, Speak, and Vote is submitted with love and respect by Donna Gaffney, DNSc, PMHCNS-BC, FAAN, and Teri Mills, MS, RN Emeritus, the “Op-Ed Nurses.”

Donna and Teri are writer-advocates who use their voices and their words to bring attention to critical issues in healthcare and public health. Through their influential commentary, they address systemic healthcare challenges, public health protection, safe staffing, and evidence-based federal health policies.

This tribute honors Robin’s legacy as a relentless advocate and reminds us that her call to care, speak, and vote continues through those who carry her work forward.

If you are interested in becoming a guest blogger for The Relentless School Nurse Blog, we would love to hear from you. Please complete the guest blogger interest form, we welcome stories that inspire, educate, and support our school nursing community.

Continuing Robin’s mission with love,

Eileen Gavin

 

Always Relentless-Robin Cogan Never Stopped Calling Us to Care, Speak, and Vote

By Donna Gaffney and Teri Mills

There are some people whose work transcends a profession and becomes an unstoppable moral force. Robin Cogan — known to thousands as “The Relentless School Nurse “— was one of those people.

Robin understood something many overlook: school nurses do far more than treat scraped knees or dispense medication. They stand at the intersection of public health, education, equity, trauma, and democracy itself. Through decades of service, advocacy, teaching, and writing, Robin relentlessly reminded us that caring for children means caring about the systems shaping their lives.

And among her clearest messages was this: voting matters.

In one of her most powerful essays, Robin wrote that “voting is an act of courageous civic engagement.” She believed voting was not merely a political exercise, but a public health responsibility — especially for nurses, educators, and anyone entrusted with the well-being of others.

Robin challenged silence. She challenged apathy. And she challenged the dangerous idea that healthcare professionals should remain detached from civic life.

“Nursing is inherently political,” she wrote in that 2024 post, because policies determine who has healthcare, whose rights are protected, whether schools are funded, whether communities are safe, and whether vulnerable families are heard.

Her words carried urgency because they were rooted in lived experience. As a longtime school nurse in Camden, New Jersey, Robin witnessed firsthand how poverty, inequity, violence, fear, and lack of access affected children every day. She understood that the consequences of elections eventually arrive in classrooms, health offices, and homes.

Robin repeatedly called on nurses and communities to embrace their collective power. With millions of nurses in America, she believed their voices could transform public policy if they showed up consistently — not only in hospitals and schools, but also at the ballot box.

Her message echoed through post after post, and in October 2022 she put it as plainly as she ever would:

Vote your conscience.

Vote for candidates who believe healthcare is a human right.

Vote for candidates who value protecting our children and teens from gun violence.

Vote for candidates who respect science.

Robin’s advocacy was never performative. It was deeply human. She believed that speaking out was part of ethical practice. That relentless moral clarity became her signature.

Even when conversations around public health, education, and democracy became divisive, Robin remained steadfast. She called for courage, civility, and persistence. She reminded readers that democracies survive not only through protest, but through ordinary people staying engaged over time.

Her advocacy extended far beyond voting alone. Robin spoke passionately about community engagement, public health, gun violence prevention, and children’s safety — and for her, that work was never abstract. Her own father had survived a mass shooting in Camden in 1949; decades later, her niece survived the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. “I hope my legacy is helping solve this crisis,” she told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2022. “Don’t we owe that to our kids?” Underneath every issue Robin championed was the same unwavering belief: people must participate in democracy if they want to protect one another.

Today, honoring Robin’s legacy means more than remembering her accomplishments. It means carrying forward her insistence that compassion requires action.

It means believing that advocacy belongs not only to politicians, but to nurses, teachers, parents, neighbors, and citizens.

Robin often described herself as relentless. And she was.

     Relentless in defending children.
     Relentless in speaking truth.
     Relentless in protecting public health.
     Relentless in reminding us that democracy is something we must actively embrace.

Because voting is not simply about politics. As Robin taught us, voting is an act of hope, a right and a responsibility. It is also courageous civic engagement.

Even after Robin was gone, we could still hear her words. Just three days after her death, Robin’s family received her copy of NASN School Nurse — inside was an editorial she had written months before, closing with the words: “You do not need permission to do this work.” It read like one last message, still calling us forward.

Robin leaves us with both a challenge and an invitation: to keep showing up for one another, especially when it is difficult.

It means registering.

It means helping others vote.

It means refusing to become numb to injustice.

It means believing that advocacy belongs not only to politicians, but to nurses, teachers, parents, neighbors, and citizens.

And perhaps the most meaningful way to honor her memory is to continue the work she never abandoned: caring fiercely for our communities and using our voices — and our votes — to build a healthier, safer, more just future for all.

PS What would Robin do? She’d tell us: “Add these to your To Do list”

1. Register: Registration deadlines vary by state. Register to vote here.

2. Make a Plan: It’s easy to make a voting plan and ask a friend or colleague to join you.