Jennifer Gunn, University of Minnesota
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Location: 2U Conference Room, Claire Fagin Hall, University of Pennsylvania
Information: ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu or 215.898.4502
As late as 1942, only 33 of Minnesota’s counties spent any money on public health, and only 34 percent of the state’s population lived in an area with a full-time health officer. In this talk, Gunn explores the hypothesis that in many rural counties, the public health infrastructure emerged from and had as its core the work of public health nurses, funded initially by a variety of public and private agencies. The Upper Midwest serves as a case study to examine the transition from the public health professionals’ and demonstration projects’ “selling” of public health to the actual establishment of county health units and the role of nurses in that transition. Jennifer Gunn, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, History of Medicine, University of Minnesota.