"Safe Motherhood" Program
At Penn, what started more than a decade ago with a Community-Based Safe Motherhood Advisor Program for village women in rural Malawi, one of the poorest countries in Africa, has become a large international outreach effort in teaching, research, and clinical care. A key reason for the success of its "Safe Motherhood" program, is that Penn has worked to include Malawian women who identify with and relate to the villagers in ways they understand and appreciate. Penn's model has been applied in Uganda. The difference there is that rather than needing to build the program from the ground up, Penn works with an already established community health-worker program.

Susan Gennaro, DSN, FAAN, RN, Director of the International Center of Research for Women, Children, and Families, involved nurses who care for laboring women in a hospital in Blantyre in neonatal resuscitation techniques. Early indicators suggest that dissemination of information from group to group of indigenous people in rural communities is a low-cost, sustainable intervention that has the potential to improve the health of women and their infants.

WHO Collaborating Center for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership and Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and ICOWHI work together to improve women's health.
A WHO Collaborating Center is a national instiution that the director general of the World Health Organization designates to from part of an international collaboative network for carrying out WHO's mandate for international helath work and its program priorities. Today, 36 collaborating centers make up the WHO Nursing and Midwifery Global Network. Fifteen of these are in the Americas/Pan American (AMRO/PAHO) Region: Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Mexico, and the United States. The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing is one of these 16.

Dean Afaf Meleis currently serves as Council General of The International Council on Women's Health Issues (ICOWHI), which is dedicated to the improvement of the health and well-being of women worldwide. In partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership she plays a critical role in promoting strategies to achieve those goals.

HIV/AIDS Prevention Program in the Caribbean
Penn Nursing professor, Loretta Sweet Jemmott, visited the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in August 2004 to establish a collaborative relationship with the UWI's Department of Advanced Nursing Education (DANE) regarding a Jamaican adolescent HIV health promotion research project.
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Dr. Sarah Kagan's program of clinical research is centered on symptom management in older adults particularly those who have cancer. Dr. Sarah Kagan was honored with a visiting professorship in August 2001 at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Medicine Department of Nursing Studies where she focused on clinical education.
Currently funded grants

Hartford Center for Geriatric Nursing Excellence

Collaboration and networking are the hallmarks of an onging relationship between Penn and Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand.
Both Deans Meleis and Phancharoenworakul agree that sharing experiences between the two cultures can only enhance outcomes.

Image: Former Penn doctoral student Usavadee Praditkul Asdorwised, now acts as faculty collborator with Penn Nursing. Her daughter Nathawan was born in the US during the final days of her mother's dissertation.

Two award-winning Penn Nursing researchers, Drs. Neville Strumpf and Lois Evans, developed a new model of individualized care for frail elders with their pathbreaking work on the elimination of physical restraints in nursing homes and hospitals. They were the first researchers to carry out a systematic, randomized trial to reduce restraints in nursing homes. Their findings from studies in Sweden, Ireland, and the US have influenced the care of older people not only at the bedside but at the policy level as well.
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Dr. Barbara Medoff-Cooper, an internationally recognized researcher on infant development and feeding behaviors in high risk infants, is exploring how rural community-based hospitals in Wales deliver health care services.
Clinical sites in the US are very different than those found in Wales, where society is homogeneous and health care is less driven by technology but widely available. Students can benefit from learning about culture-specific ways of nursing care.

Dr. Terri E. Weaver, co-Director of the Center for Urban Health Research, studies the effect of daytime sleepiness on daily behaviors. In collaboration with the University of Western Ontario, she is engaged in a Multisite Study of the Functional Outcomes of CPAP Use.
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Image features Dr. Ann Rogers and Terri Weaver analyzing their data on sleep research.

Anne Keane, EdD, FAAN, RN, and Barbara Medoff-Cooper, PhD, FAAN, CRNP, RN, Helen M. Shearer Professor in Nutrition, participated in the annual review of the first integrated clinical masters nursing program in Israel.

Dr. Medoff-Cooper's clinical interests include neonatal intensive care, pediatric primary care and high risk followup programs. She has been a visiting scholar at the Hebrew University/Hadassah Medical Organization since 1996.