Legacy of Nursing’s History: Lillian Wald
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Legacy of Nursing’s History: Lillian Wald
Lillian Wald was inducted into the American Nursing Association (ANA) Hall of Fame in 1976, after she spent more than 40 years taking an influential stance against political and social corruption, to support social justice within the community through public nursing care. Wald’s progressive thinking and leadership, not only impacted child labor and pure food laws, immigration regulations, improvements to housing conditions, and education for the intellectually challenged, it notably contributed to the nursing profession in a variety of ways still represented today (ANA Hall of Fame Inductee n.d.).
In 1839, Wald being a young nurse graduate, established the Henry Street Settlement (HHS) and she progressed the profession and even collaborated with President Theodor Roosevelt on the development of the United States Children’s Bureau (Keeling, 2015; Women’s History website). During this time period, rapid industrialization and economic growth, as well as the Western Expansion and an influx of immigration in the New York area were transforming her local communities (Industrialization and Conflict in America: 1840–1875, n.d.).
Through her work as a nurse, advocacy, and political lobbying efforts, Wald paved the ways for school nursing, health insurance and national healthcare reform (Kub, 2015). Her beginnings of “public health nursing” (PHN), recognized the necessity to meet the physical healthcare of a patient, in addition to addressing issues related to the “economic, environmental, and social circumstances” and “linked nursing, motherhood, social welfare and the public” (Buhler-Wilerson, 1985; Reverby, 1993).
When Wald and her team of PHN’s were in action, “The aims of the visit were to care for the sick, especially when the patient could not be sent to a hospital; teach the...
