Our Mission

The overall mission of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of Nursing History is to ensure the generation of historical knowledge, scholarship, and research on healthcare and nursing history in the United States and around the world, thereby enabling a better understanding of contemporary healthcare issues.

Penn's Nursing History Center is committed to providing the broadest and highest quality educational programs and is equally committed to disseminating research findings through conferences, publications, and interdisciplinary sharing and collaborations.

By these means, the Bates Center dedicates itself to a leadership role in advancing the public's knowledge of nursing and healthcare history.

The four goals of Penn's nursing history center are to:

• Facilitate the production and dissemination of nursing and healthcare history
• Offer education in nursing and healthcare history though course offerings at undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels and through work with visiting fellows
• Maintain a unique and rich repository of  documents, images, and other materials, preserve those materials, and participate in the archival community
• Ensure access to its materials for scholars and researchers