Lillian Wald Essay

Lillian Wald can be credited with important health care initiatives that are still very relevant today. Wald, intent on becoming a doctor, attended school after school and excelled throughout (Hansen, n.d.). As a young nurse in New York in the late 1800s, she was given the task of planning home health care for poor immigrant families (Hansen, n.d.). Consequently, Wald was immediately distraught and heartbroken by the economic hardship and lack of healthcare felt by the people of the lower East Side of New York (Hansen, n.d.). She changed her intent, left medical school and moved to the area (Hansen, n.d.). Walt’s priority became clear. She wanted to make healthcare affordable and accessible to this community (Hansen, n.d.) In 1895, she founded the Henry Street Nurses Settlement and established public health nursing (Hansen, n.d.). Starting with only herself and another nurse, this group of nurses provided services based on a sliding pay scale to grant all residents access to care (Hansen, …show more content…
Wald,” 2008). She was devoted to improving the lives of children through healthcare, education and recreation by providing playgrounds, school nurses and launching school lunch programs (Hansen, n.d.). Wald worked with Margaret Sanger in the fight for women’s rights for birth control, held demonstrations against WWI, and was chairman of community nursing for the Red Cross where she played a major role in the fight to wipe out the 1918 flu epidemic (Hansen, n.d.). Wald lobbied for workplace health inspections and advocated for employee health and preventative healthcare (Hansen, n.d.). Furthermore, she was pivotal in getting nursing education to occur mainly in universities while reserving clinical experience to occur in hospitals (Hansen,