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About this sample
About this sample
Words: 586 |
Page: 1|
3 min read
Published: Mar 1, 2019
Words: 586|Page: 1|3 min read
Published: Mar 1, 2019
On March 10, 1867, Lillian Wald was born into a German-Jewish middle-class family in Cincinnati, Ohio. She resided with her family in Ohio until 1878 when she moved with her family to Rochester, New York for her father’s career as an optics dealer. Her family enrolled her into a boarding school for young ladies called Miss Cruttenden’s English-French School. Lillian Wald was ambitious at a young age as she applied for college at the age of 16. Vassar College, the school the applied to, felt that Lillian was much too young for college and was denied entry. Six years later, at the age of 22, Lillian was accepted into the New York Hospital’s School of Nursing. Wald graduated from nursing school in 1891. She continued her education at the Woman’s Medical College. (National Women’s History Museum, n.d.)
One of the places that Wald worked at in her nursing career was the New York Juvenile Asylum, now called Children’s Village. New York Juvenile Asylum was an orphanage and the conditions were very poor. In 1893, Wald decided to leave medical school and start teaching nursing classes at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls located in the lower east side of New York City. Most of her students were impoverished families that had immigrated to the United States. Not long afterwards, she became a visiting nurse that cared for the ill residents in the Lower East Side of New York City. Wald and Mary Brewster, another famous nurse, moved in to a room near the patients so that they could take care of them more effectively. During this time, Wald came up with the name “public health nurse” to call nurses that worked in the public community. (Jewish Women’s Archive, n.d.)
Wald had a lot of influence in getting nursing into public schools. Wald’s ideas helped spearhead the New York Board of Health to establish the first public nursing foundation in the world. She was the National Organization of Public Health Nursing’s first president. She founded a nursing insurance affiliation with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company that developed a model for numerous other business developments. Wald also helped establish the Columbia University School of Nursing and recommended a national health insurance plan. (National Women’s History Museum, n.d.) She was the author of two books, The House on Henry Street (1911) and Windows on Henry Street (1934), that described her work in community health.
Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement, not-for-profit social service agency in the Lower East Side neighborhood New York City that provides social services, arts programs and health care services. A prominent Jewish philanthropist, Jacob Schiff, was very impressed with Wald and her service agency that he provided funding to her under the table to help the disadvantaged Jewish Russian families. Wald had employed 27 nurses by 1906 and attracted more financial support from other famous philanthropists, such as Elizabeth Milbank Anderson. (New York Times, 1916). In 1913, Wald had 92 people working for the Henry Street Settlement. Eventually, the Henry Street Settlement established as the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. (Fee and Bu, 2010)
Wald’s dream for the Henry Street Settlement was like none other for that period. Wald envisioned equal and fair health care for all persons despite their socio-economic status, gender, social status, race or age. (Lannon, 2006) She believed that everyone should be able to have home health care. She was a strong believer in excellent bedside manner and treated each person with the utmost respect whether they could afford their healthcare services or not.
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