On The Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics
Project Directors: Jennifer Dohrn, Wilmot James, Victoria Rosner
Coordinators: Kurt Holuba, Mina Shah
Graduate Assistant: Lauren J. DeVaughn
The working group On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics seeks to understand the role of nurses as change agents in the prevention, detection and response to pandemic infectious disease outbreaks. Although nurses are crucial to combatting pandemics, their work is often not considered when international leaders gather to discuss global health issues. This is a consequence of both the MD-centered hierarchy of medical practice and the fact that nursing remains a profession in which women – whose work is systemically undervalued -- predominate (in the US, over 90% of registered nurses are women). This is a dangerous omission, since although nurses are on the front lines of care, little is known about the range of activities they undertake beyond what may be obvious in patient care. Even key clinical innovations are often overlooked when they should be universally implemented. And there is little record of the painful choices nurses and other health professionals often make between taking care of patients and protecting themselves and their families.
This working group is necessarily inter-sectoral and inter-disciplinary. On the Frontlines draws on the work of the health science community – nursing, medicine, public health, evolutionary biology and immunology, as well as demography – to understand the changing nature of infectious diseases and how to manage and contain them. We engage the scholarship – international health regulations, international law and the doctrine of the duty to protect – that deals with the ethical character of leadership in the global health and biodefense communities and the barriers nursing leaders face in pursuing the public good. Further, to document the role of nurses, we draw on historical methods, anthropology and journalism to capture nurses’ experience in the field.
This group formed around an interest in understanding the work of nurses and midwives in the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. In response to recent events, we have expanded our scope to include a comparative study of the work of nurses and midwives in the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. In collaboration with the Columbia Center for Oral History Research, we are conducting oral histories of COVID-19 nurses, and this effort is being jointly directed by Mary Marshall Clark and Jennifer Dohrn.
News
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Dohrn’s award will be honored at the International Nurses Day celebration in May 2021.
Jeremy Orloff won the Change Agent Award at the first-ever Academic Prizes and Student Leadership Awards Virtual Ceremony.
Professor Dohrn’s 208 person class held signs in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Wilmot James will co-lead Executive Education in the Social Sciences, a new course on pandemics.
The recent On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics working group webinar can now be found on the CSSD YouTube channel.
The profile on Jeremy Orloff discusses the group’s trip to West Africa, centered around their efforts to retrieve oral histories from local nurses and midwives active during the Ebola crisis.
On the Frontlines Coordinator, Jeremy Orloff, reflects on recent experiences in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
CSSD launches six new projects for the 2018-19 academic year. The projects will address gender, race, sexuality, and other forms of inequality to foster ethical and progressive social change.
Jennifer Dohrn, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, 2006
FrontlineNurses.org
Past Events
Join us for the release of the report on the proceedings of the third colloquium of the History and Future of Planetary Threats series held on March 31, 2021. Special guest speaker Tom Frieden, report contributor Chinwe Lucia Ochu, and panelist Youssef Charif will reflect on the report’s critical lessons for crisis communications and vaccine uptake.
As the COVID-19 vaccine campaign moves worldwide, innovative approaches to vaccine campaigns are badly needed. How to build trust in vaccines among a weary, anxious and often skeptical public? Join us for a conversation among African and US policymakers, activists, nursing leaders and academics to dissect the elements of effective risk communications campaigns, with an emphasis on empowering individuals and communities to lead the charge.
You are invited to meet, listen to, and engage with frontline nurses and midwives at our launch event on Wednesday, March 10th, 2021 at 12:00 pm EST. We’ll share the website and hear from project contributors and interviewees.
Visit the On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics working group page to learn more about their work and individual members. Their website FrontlineNurses.org is currently under construction and coming soon!
Presented by the Center for the Study of Social Difference working group, On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics.
Mary Marshall Clark, director of the Center for Oral History Research at Columbia University, will lead a workshop on how to plan and conduct oral histories in communities affected by disasters and pandemics.
Fellows
Senior Research Scientist, INCITE (Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics), Director, Columbia Center for Oral History Research
In addition to being the Director of the Columbia University Center for Oral History Research in INCITE, Mary Marshall is the co-founding director of Columbia’s Oral History Master of Arts (OHMA) degree program (with Peter Bearman) created in 2008-09, the first oral history master’s program in the United States. Mary Marshall has been involved in the oral history movement since 1991, and was president of the United States Oral History Association from 2001-2002.
Associate Professor of Nursing and Assistant Dean of Global Initiatives, Nursing at Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Jennifer Dohrn is the director of the Office of Global Initiatives and an assistant professor at Columbia Nursing where she teaches community health. She oversees collaboration with Columbia Global Centers and leads the Columbia Nursing WHO Collaborative Health Center for Advanced Practice Nursing. Dohrn has worked as a nurse educator and nurse midwife for more than two decades.
Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), College of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University
Wilmot James is a Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), College of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University. An academic by background with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he was previously a Member of Parliament (South Africa) and opposition spokesperson on health. Wilmot is the author and/or editor of 17 books that include the policy-oriented Vital Signs: Health Security in South Africa (2020), a set of essays on the public understanding of science titled Nature’s Gifts: Why we are the way we are (2010), a coedited book Biotechnology and Health: South Africa’s aspirations in health-related biotechnology (2007) and a co-edited collection of Nelson Mandela’s presidential speeches Nelson Mandela In His Own Words (2003), the latter having the distinction of containing forwards by Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan and given to the late Nelson Mandela on his 85th birthday.
Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University
Dr. Strasser is a public health professional with 30 years of experience in nursing and public health. She is the senior director for human resources for health (HRH), providing leadership, guidance and direction for the development, implementation, and assessment of programs to develop human resources for health across ICAP's portfolio of programs.
Former Technical Officer of Nursing and Midwifery, World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland
Annette Mwansa Nkowane is a nurse and a midwife from Zambia. During the Ebola outbreak, Mwansa served as the Technical Officer of Nursing and Midwifery in the World Health Organization's Health Workforce Department in Geneva.
Doctoral Student, General Studies, Columbia University
Jeremy Orloff is a premed postbac student in the School of General Studies. Prior to his interest in medicine, he studied political science and history at Johns Hopkins University. He later worked in local New York City government relations. As a postbac, Jeremy has been involved in clinical research around obesity and related diseases.
Nursing and Midwifery Advisor, Seed Global Health/ Malawi
Margaret Loma Phiri is a nurse and midwife with a Masters in Nursing Education and Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia Universityx. She also holds a post – graduate diploma in Community Health from Medical University of Southern Africa (MEDUNSA) South Africa. She has held a number of leadership positions including: Regional Advisor for Nursing &Midwifery for WHO- African Region; HRH Advisor, WHO- Swaziland Country Office; Regional Capacity Building Coordinator for East- Central & Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA- Health Community) & ECSACON for SADC Region; Quality Assurance Director and Senior Lecturer in Education and Leadership for University of Malawi, Kamuzu College of Nursing – Malawi; and Maternal and Child Health Advisor WHO/ Sierra Leone during the Ebola Recovery and Transition period;
Student Associates
Doctoral Student, Psychology, University of Pittsburgh
Lia attended the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with a degree in psychology.
Premedical Post Baccalaureate Student, General Studies, Columbia University
Kurt Holuba is currently a premed postbac student in the School of General Studies. Previously, he attended Princeton University, earning a B.A. in Psychology. After graduation, Kurt immediately enrolled in the postbac program. He is interested in the intersection between psychology and physiology as it relates to response to stress.
Doctoral Student, Medicine, Columbia University
Ming Pei is currently a pre-health student in the Pre-Medical Post Baccalaureate Program at Columbia University. Previously, she attended University of California, Berkeley earning a B.A. in Statistics and B.A. in Economics. She is interested in public health research and aims to make an impact on healthcare policy making.
Doctoral Student, Nursing, Columbia University
Maureen Saylor is currently a student in the Master's Direct Entry program at Columbia University School of Nursing. She also graduated in May 2019 from Mailman School of Public Health with her MPH in Population and Family Health. Previously, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana where she primarily worked on projects related to HIV/AIDS and issues surrounding gender-based violence. She is passionate about participatory qualitative research and hopes to pursue a career in community health upon graduating from the MDE program in summer 2020.
Doctoral Student, Medicine, Columbia University
Lewis is a student associate of On the Frontlines: Nursing Leadership in Pandemics. He completed Columbia University’s post-baccalaureate pre-medical program in May 2019, and is currently in the process of applying to medical school.