Our Nurse of the Week is Annette Bongiovanni, a nurse and public health policy expert who has spent the last four decades of her career working to make the world a healthier place. Since graduating from Binghamton University’s Decker School of Nursing in the late 70s, Bongiovanni has traveled the world for her career in public health policy, evaluation, and research.
Bongiovanni has worked for the United States Agency for International Development, World Bank, and World Health Organization, and collaborated with the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has also partnered with foundations and universities, designing and leading initiatives to enhance maternal, neonatal, and child health; improve reproductive health and family planning; and curb the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.
When Bongiovanni started nursing school she wanted to become a social worker and thought she could earn money to pay for a master’s degree by working as a nurse for a few years. However, by the time she graduated she never doubted she wanted to be a nurse.She had focused on community mental health as an undergrad student, and after Binghamton she became a nurse at Stanford University, treating some of the first HIV patients in California’s Bay Area. Later, she became a critical-care nurse working with heart and heart-lung transplant patients.
Bongiovanni moved to Bali for a few months in the 80s to pursue a hobby and fell in love with Indonesia. She later returned to become a project director for Project HOPE in the pediatric and neonatal ICU at the University of Indonesia’s teaching hospital in Jakarta. She also advised Indonesia’s Ministry of Health about creating a policy requiring the certification of pediatric intensive-care nurses, resulting in a program that continues 30 years later.
After returning, Bongiovanni pursued a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s School of Government. Her career has since taken her to nearly 50 countries, and inspired her to publish more than 30 research papers and write policy briefs for past presidents including Bill Clinton.
Bongiovanni is currently the vice president of technical services for the Virginia-based International Business and Technical Consultants Inc., where she leads a global team with staff in the United States and abroad who are researching the effectiveness of US foreign assistance, such as aid programs to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Bongiovanni tells binghamton.edu, “The Decker School taught me a lot about the patient as an individual. They come from different walks of life, but they’re all treated equally. To me, that’s the most beautiful thing about being a nurse—everyone is treated the same in a patient gown, and no one person is more important than another. Everybody gets out of bed one foot at a time.”
To learn more about Annette Bongiovanni, a nurse and public health policy expert who has spent the last four decades of her career working to make the world a healthier place, visit here.
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