Advancing nursing leadership, investing in nursing education, and providing support and resources for nurses around the world are key to addressing disease outbreaks and improving global public health, according to experts from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
In the January/February 2021 issue of Nursing Economic$, Michelle Williams, dean of the faculty, and Stephanie Ferguson, visiting fellow in the Department of Health Policy and Management, wrote that nurses have been at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic and are typically on the front lines of other health emergencies. They make up nearly half of the world’s health care workforce and deliver almost 80% of the hands-on care. But the nursing workforce is shrinking and aging, and the profession has an insufficient role at the policymaking level.
“Nurses must be where decisions are made,” the authors wrote. “To achieve global health security, we [must] ensure the world’s nursing workforce is adequately staffed and supported and that nurses are at public health and public policy tables to guide, promote, and drive meaningful change.”
Read the Nursing Economic$ article: Why Nurses Hold the Key to Global Health Security