Student takes nursing global with United Nations

Even though Nursing freshman Kiahana Brooks has only been in Philadelphia for four months, she is already making her mark by establishing a global health club for nursing students and professionals across the city.

Brooks, a second-degree Nursing student who graduated from Harvard University this spring with a bachelor’s degree in evolutionary biology, is collaborating with four nursing students from Thomas Jefferson University in Center City on the project — officially known as the Global Nursing Club of Philadelphia. Her team is being sponsored by the United Nations Association of Greater Philadelphia, where Brooks is employed in a work-study position.

The club has two main components: an ongoing web-based article critique and a series of seminars featuring talks by professionals in the global health field.

A new article will be posted every two weeks along with a set of questions to serve as a starting point for discussion. Registered users can post comments on the site, which offers membership free of charge.

Brooks hopes to host four seminars this year, each showcasing a different speaker and allowing attendees to participate in a question-and-answer session.

The first speaker is Kelly Delaney, who earned her doctorate from Penn Nursing and has worked with Action Against Hunger in Kenya. Brooks said this seminar will be hosted at Penn sometime in October, and she plans to hold the remaining seminars at different schools around the city to engage a wider community.

Christiaan Morssink, an adjunct assistant professor of Nursing and president of UNA-GP, guided Brooks throughout the project and said that nurses will inevitably play a big role in addressing emerging global health issues. He believes nurses are in a unique position to address problems outside care itself, such as the “brain drain” that draws many health professionals away from underdeveloped areas that need the most help and a lack of emphasis on hygiene.

“The great thing about nurses is that we look at the whole person,” Brooks said. “Nursing has a broad view of health care, which is especially important in developing countries.”

Brooks hopes that this club’s global perspective on health care will encourage greater efforts by people within her community to become global citizens, and that these efforts will eventually be run by the club’s membership both inside and outside of Penn.

Nursing sophomore Gabriella Kim, who is considering a minor in global health, said that a program like Brooks’ “would tie in perfectly” with the overall Nursing mindset, which considers not only the best way to give care but also how to communicate effectively with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures.

The project can also provide a model for fields beyond nursing, including engineering and social work, Morssink said. “[The UNA-GP] is giving Kiahana the opportunity to do something her peers are not doing, and I invite her peers to participate,” he said. “I want them all to join UNA-GP.”

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