In 2020 the World Health Organization will release the first-ever State of the World’s Nursing (SOWN) Report and the State of the World’s Midwifery Report. To address this herculean data collection effort, officials from the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) gathered in Brickell with health department leaders from over a dozen Pan American countries and territories.
But the weekend’s National Health Workforce Accounts Workshop wasn’t all work. The health officials took a brief break to network at the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies Thursday evening. The reception, hosted by SONHS Dean and Professor Cindy L. Munro and attended by Dr. Lourdes Dieck-Assad, the University of Miami’s vice president for Hemispheric and Global Affairs, kicked off with a tour of the school’s Simulation Hospital followed by an official welcome from Dean Munro.
“We are honored to have so many distinguished guests from the Pan American region here this evening,” said Munro, who went on to highlight the work SONHS is doing as a long-time PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre to build nursing workforce capacity and improve patient safety with partner institutions in the PAHO region.
Before inviting guests to mingle, she singled out Dr. Johis Ortega for expanding meaningful and mutually enriching collaborations in the region. Ortega, an associate professor of clinical, serves as the school’s PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre director and associate dean for Hemispheric and Global Initiatives. Ortega helped coordinate the reception with Dr. Silvia Cassiani, regional advisor on Nursing and Allied Health Personnel for PAHO/WHO.
Also in attendance were chief nursing officers, health planners, secretaries of health, and various other Ministry of Health representatives from over a dozen countries and territories in the Western Hemisphere, including Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname, Grenada, and Canada, among others, as well as officials from WHO, PAHO, and the U.S. Health Resources & Service Administration’s Office of Global Health.
With over 20.5 million nurses and midwives worldwide, the World Health Assembly declared 2020 will be the first-ever Year of the Nurse and Midwife. The designation honors the bicentennial of the birth of Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing. Nurses and midwives comprise almost 50% of the current global health workforce. Efforts are under way not only to increase the number of nurse educators and nurses worldwide, but also to raise visibility and bring greater international attention to their collective impact as leaders and change agents in advancing universal health.
