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.
The University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL) recently transformed four of their classrooms into working parts of a disaster zone to help better prepare student and professional nurses for disasters and public health emergencies they may face over the course of their careers. The simulations were part of an innovative workshop on disaster preparedness, formed as a joint effort between UMSL, Johns Hopkins University, and Saint Louis University.
Attendees of the workshop were guided through online, interactive toolkits designed by Lavin and her colleagues to help them explore and learn from real-scenarios including 9/11, Zika, and the Flint water crisis. Then the day ended with a two-hour drill simulating a residential building fire and collapse.
Lavin tells Blogs.UMSL.edu, “Residential fires occur every day in every country. They are the most common disaster to impact an individual family. We wanted students to understand that an apartment fire in a small community with only a small hospital could indeed be a mass casualty event for that particular community.”
One room at the university was transformed into a health department, another into a hospital emergency department, a third into a field site, and a fourth into a casualty area. The purpose of the building fire simulation was to teach attendees that a disaster doesn’t have to garner national attention to be real and devastating. The workshop also focused on self and family preparedness, encouraging attendees to create a three-day, emergency “go bag” and extensive family plan in case of emergency. Nurses can’t do their jobs as effectively in a disaster without a plan for themselves and their family.
To learn more about UMSL’s disaster preparedness workshop, visit here.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) has a rural health care immersion program where the focus of the curriculum is on disaster and crisis response. Their classroom discussions are usually hypothetical, but after a tornado hit northwestern Wisconsin in late May, nursing students in the rural health care program put their knowledge to the test by aiding in tornado relief efforts.
Clinical assistant professor Pamela Guthman was leading a team of seven nursing students in the Community and Public Health Immersion Clinical program in northwestern Wisconsin when a tornado hit nearby. Students were there to learn about the necessity of health care providers and health educators in rural and underserved communities.[et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_39]
The nursing students partnered with the American Red Cross to aid in recovery efforts, specifically those who were displaced after the tornado destroyed a trailer park. The students did not provide immediate medical attention, but they were able to help by interviewing people affected by the tornado, and providing those people with health and housing information. Guthman tells the Wisconsin State Journal,
“What we’re going to be doing is helping people who have been devastated by the loss of their homes. We know that housing is very closely related to a person’s mental health.”
The counties affected by the tornado have been under-resourced for a long time, creating a health disparity and lack of resources which makes it even harder for these communities to bounce back following a natural disaster. One of the goals of the rural health care immersion program is for students to learn a sensitivity for the challenges of rural communities. There is a need for both health care professionals working on acute crises and professionals focusing on prevention. Public health nurses are an essential part of the healthcare team in rural areas.
To learn more about the rural health care immersion program at UW-Madison and their service providing tornado relief aid, visit here.
Chamberlain College of Nursing has broadened its reach in healthcare education with the establishment of Chamberlain University and the launch of a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree within the new College of Health Professions. The MPH degree expands the academic offerings of Chamberlain University which includes pre-and post-licensure nursing degree programs in the existing College of Nursing.
Chamberlain University was created to build upon the legacy of the Chamberlain College of Nursing and fulfill a vision of extending the mission to educate, empower, and embolden diverse healthcare professionals to advance the health of people, families, communities, and nations. Susan Groenwald, PhD, RN, ANEF, FAAN, president of Chamberlain University, tells Chamberlain.edu:
“For more than 125 years, Chamberlain College of Nursing has worked to transform healthcare through the preparation of extraordinary nurses. The establishment of Chamberlain University and the College of Health Professions is a natural evolution of our vision and will benefit our students and society. We are excited about Chamberlain’s future and are looking forward to playing a bigger role in helping transform healthcare in local and global communities.”
The new MPH degree will enhance the Chamberlain focus on providing health and wellness education, improving healthcare policy, and collaborating with others to achieve a culture of health through interdisciplinary collaboration and making health a shared value across communities. Public health initiatives improve lives worldwide by increasing life expectancy, promoting healthy lifestyles, and researching prevention of infectious diseases. The MPH degree program is a 42-credit-hour degree program including practicum fieldwork that can be completed in two years of full-time study.
To learn more about Chamberlain University and the new Master of Public Health degree program, visit here.
