I came across this today and you might be interested.
Sigma Theta Tau International (SSTI) is a Nursing organisation based in America but it is also a global organisation. They run education programmes, give scholarships, provide leadership programmes amongst other things. They also run an initiative called GAPFON. I’m not keen on anything with gap in the title as in ‘close the gap’, for different reasons, but that’s another blog post!
Founded in 1922 their mission is:
Advance world health and celebrate nursing excellence in scholarship, leadership, and service.
GAPFON is all about improving global health. They have people in leadership positions from nursing and midwifery worldwide, who engage through multidisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration, to improve global health. They see the value of having nurses and midwives participate in influencing health policy.
They were clever enough to realise that nurses and midwives are a direct contact with stakeholders such as:
- Educational Institutions
- Governmental
- Political bodies
- Healthcare providers
- Healthcare systems
- Regulatory bodies
- Accreditation bodies
- Trade associations
- Not for profit organisations
- UN
- WHO
And that when you get midwives and nurses together as a big crew, then you can make a difference. I think they are pretty smart.
I had a quick search on who is representing Australia in this. I found that there is only one representative John Daly from the University of Technology, Sydney. Now John is a great chap, and I’m sure is doing a fine job, but I’d like to see some women leaders in midwifery and nursing filling some of these spots too. I know a lot of nurses and midwives are so exhausted from their own jobs but I think contributing to global health is a massively exciting thing to get involved in, people should know about it.
You can read the report HERE!
Some days I decide I just want to do a Masters in Public health. Health is always in my heart somewhere. I hope some of you have found this interesting or useful. I could possibly talk about it for the next 6 hours.
Edie xoxo
