The Next Revolution

This week I was thrilled to have as a guest at Penn Nursing Dr. Richard Horton, editor of the internationally renowned medical journal The Lancet. He spent three days meeting with nursing and medical faculty, students, and University leadership. One of the main topics everywhere was how the healthcare professions can come together to respond justly and equitably to global health needs and, to achieve that, how they need to be educated together. On Wednesday Dr. Horton gave an inspiring presentation to a crowded auditorium here in Fagin Hall titled “A Bonfire of the Professions: Prospects for Global Health.”

The dean of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and I jointly hosted the lecture, which is indicative of how nursing and medicine are connected in a deep partnership, opening up opportunities for advances in health that cross continents and span seas.

Dr. Horton speaks passionately about the need for a patient-centered “revolution” in healthcare. “We are living through a healthcare crisis in the world today,” he said this week. He urged the healthcare professions to take heed that child survival, maternal health, and the infectious diseases malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS are still rampant in the parts of the world that are the poorest and have the fewest healthcare resources. He emphasized: “The current status quo simply cannot continue.”

I had the distinct pleasure to work with Dr. Horton and international colleagues on the 2010 report “Health Professionals for a New Century: Transforming Education to Strengthen Health Systems in an Interdependent World” from The Lancet and the Institute of Medicine.

In it, we advocated that “all health professionals in all countries should be educated to mobilize knowledge and to engage in critical reasoning and ethical conduct so that they are competent to participate in patient- and population-centered health systems as members of locally responsive and globally connected teams.”

To reach this vision, Dr. Horton is once again turning to Penn Nursing and to the University. He has proposed that Penn join The Lancet in a commission that would lead to “transprofessionalism,” uniting nurses, midwives, community health workers, and doctors to address global needs and inequities in healthcare.

That is a fantastic approach to global health today. We look forward to partnering with The Lancet in realizing some of the pioneering recommendations proposed in “Health Professionals for a New Century.”

Safe Womanhood

Women are half of the human race. By empowering them through health and educational opportunities, we increase their personal potential to contribute to the economic, political, and social advancement of societies. What society would not benefit from such contributions?  Nurses, the largest healthcare workforce in the world, see women intimately as patients, as pregnant women, as mothers caring for their children, as managers of health, and as daughters caring for their extended families. Therefore, nurses have the knowledge, the power, the voice, and the expertise to work toward safe womanhood and to advocate for women’s health, for human rights, and for having options in life.

Women must be equal partners with equal voice to have an impact on decision-making, policy-making, and development. The marginalization and disempowerment of women hinders them from their rights as human beings to reach their full potential to flourish and effectively contribute to their societies.

At the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, we have established a Center for Global Women’s Health. The Center will contribute to global research in women’s health scholarship, education, practice, and leadership using an equitable and human justice framework.

The opening of the Center corresponds with the United Nations’ initiatives for the empowerment of women globally and with national attention to women’s health from President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.  They have made girls and women central in U.S. global health programs.
 
Penn Nursing Professor Marilyn Sommers, PhD, RN, FAAN, is director of our Center for Global Women’s Health. Her research focuses on trauma, particularly injuries from rape, sexual assault, and domestic abuse. Last fall, she won the Inaugural Writing Award for Excellence in Research from the Journal of Forensic Nursing for her article “Health Disparities in the Forensic Sexual Assault Examination Related to Skin Color.” Dr. Sommers has conducted path-breaking research finding that injuries are more detectable on lighter skinned women than on darker skinned women, irrespective of race, using current exams for sexual assault injury.
 
With such innovative research, the Center for Global Women’s Health will chart new directions in the domains of safety from violence and harm, equity, empowerment, advocacy, health promotion, and disease prevention. The ultimate goal is to attain safe womanhood, which provides the context and the impetus for healthier and safer families and societies. In short, making women safe and healthy makes the world safe and healthy.