National Nurses United

BY KARI JONES t was haiti, 2010. Jana Siu's patients were injured, sick. Some of them were missing limbs from the recent earthquake. And after they were treated, Siu, a regis- tered nurse at the University of California, San Francis- co Medical Center (UCSF) and a global nursing volunteer, was haunted by the fact that the patients had no choice but to return to the streets, into tents. "I did international nursing for three or four years, and then I had to take a break because it felt like there was something bigger to address," said Siu. An oncology nurse, Siu had found herself drawn to international nursing projects. Before she volunteered with the Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN) to provide aid in Haiti, she had partici- pated in volunteer projects with the Real Medicine Foundation, in Madia Perdesh, India, and in Pisco, Peru, after the 2007 earthquake. Siu grew up in a multilingual and multicultural household, where her Taiwanese mother and Chinese father did not speak each other's dialect when they were paired through an arranged marriage. "I'm attuned to patients' cultural and educational barriers, since I spent all of my life explaining and translating for my family," said Siu. "It allowed me to develop unique skills that have been useful in nursing." With her ability to simultaneously understand multiple perspec- tives, Siu had always been uniquely positioned to be able to step back and take in a situation's bigger picture. But despite her cultural sensitivity and drive to provide care, a key piece of the puzzle in how to best deliver that care seemed to be missing. "I remember thinking what we were doing was important," said Siu, "but what about the long-term things that impact health? • • • • • in 2013, siu embarked on what would become a two-year path toward finding answers: She was awarded a scholarship by National Nurses United to complete the online certificate program in Women's Global Health Leadership (WGHL) at Rutgers University and is among the first students to graduate from this innovative program. Established as a partnership between National Nurses United and two programs at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, the depart- ment of Women's and Gender Studies and the Institute for Women's Leadership (IWL), the program examines the social, economic, politi- cal, and environmental forces throughout the world that are shaping public health. The program was designed by the NNU Education Department, with core courses taught by NNU educators and occa- sional special topic courses—such as "Medicine and Biopolitics" and "The Color of AIDS"—taught by Rutgers faculty. Because Rutgers Uni- versity is accredited, course credit fulfills general education require- ments at most universities and colleges throughout the country. "Nurses who work in the trenches, we don't always know who is actually making the decisions, up above, that are impacting these patients we're taking care of, and it's not until you figure out what the problem is that you can start ini- tiating change," said Siu. To that end, Siu, along with students in the program, took courses exploring the effects of national debt, transnational trade agreements, export agri- culture programs, structural adjustment policies, and envi- ronmental depletion on nutri- tion and health. According to Siu, one of her favorite courses was titled "Debt, Crisis, and Women's Health." "The professor laid a solid foundation so that we were able to build toward having in-depth con- versations and thoughts about how debt controls the world," said Siu, noting that the final project forced students to push past simply identi- fying problems and instead coming up with solutions. "When we were left to our own creativity and optimism, we all came up with innovative ways to tackle debt. It felt really great to be collaborative and creative with students who wanted to make the world a more just place." • • • • • this is the first academic program based on the values of bed- side nurses: caring, compassion, and community. "NNU takes a very broad view of public health and of patient advocacy, so that is why our nurses work for environmental, racial, and economic justice," said Jean Ross, RN and a copresident of NNU. "The certificate pro- gram supplements these values that nurses already instinctively hold in their hearts with semester-long, university-level courses to help them explore these topics in great depth. The intellectual rigor and challenge really takes their understanding of the root causes of illness and health to the next level. We've heard from the nurses that they just love these courses." 12 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G O C T O B E R 2 0 1 5 Connect the Dots The Women's Global Health Leadership program helps RNs like Jana Siu better understand I

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