Penn Nursing 090805_final_4c - University of Pennsylvania School ...

To Improve Health Locally…
Healthy in Philadelphia
Eileen Sullivan-Marx
PhD, CRNP, FAAN, RN
Associate Professor of Nursing, Shearer Term
Professor for Healthy Community Practices,
and Associate Dean for Practice and
Community Affairs
The School of Nursing’s 2003-2008
strategic plan,“Building on Excellence:
Positioning Ourselves for the Future,”
is driven by the critical issues in healthcare
and the School’s tripartite mission
of education, research, and practice.
Core values of this mission embrace
concepts of community and partnership
including envisioning and designing
programs that are responsive to
societal needs, operating within a global
and multicultural context, and forming
interdisciplinary and community
partnerships to meet the needs of all
constituents.
To achieve these goals, the School
has launched “Healthy in Philadelphia”
(HIP) – an initiative designed to partner
with the West Philadelphia community
to meet the needs of society
and to advance the translation of
knowledge into evidence-based, culturally
competent models of care in the
areas of healthy lifestyles; transitions in
health, illness, and end of life; and disparities
in access to and provision of
healthcare.
“The profession of nursing has a
long history of developing successful
community partnerships and is uniquely
qualified to serve as a promising
source of leadership for communitybased
health initiatives and services,”
says Eileen Sullivan-Marx, PhD,
CRNP, FAAN, RN,Associate Professor
of Nursing, Shearer Term Professor for
Healthy Community Practices, and
Associate Dean for Practice and
Community Affairs.
In 1998, Penn Nursing established,
and currently operates, the Living
Independently For Elders (LIFE)
Program, a Medicare risk-based program
providing long-term care services
for elders who prefer to remain living
in their West Philadelphia homes.
Through the LIFE Program, the School
of Nursing established a significant
partnership with the aged and the community
of West Philadelphia to address
healthcare disparities of the vulnerable,
frail older adults living at home.
Joining with Penn’s Center for
Community Partnerships, Penn’s
… And Globally
We have come together in
a great and grounded
cosmopolitan spirit —
from education, politics,
communications, medicine,
nursing, law, public policy,
social work, and dozens of
other fields of human
endeavor — to share our
knowledge and experience.
Safe Womanhood in an
Unsafe World: The Penn
Summit on Global Issues
in Women’s Health
It’s a relatively rare event in the intellectual
history of the world when the
leading minds representing many of the
world’s cultures, countries, universities,
non-governmental organizations, and
governments come together to create a
dialogue specifically to improve the status
of women.The most recent such
event took place in April when the
University of Pennsylvania called a
summit to discuss Global Issues in
Women’s Health.
Entitled “Safe Womanhood in an
Unsafe World,” the conference built
upon the groundwork laid by the
United Nations Fourth World
Conference on Women, held in Beijing,
and continued at the International
Conference on Population and
Development which took place in
Cairo, which detailed the plight of
women worldwide, but most particularly
in less developed countries.The
Beijing summit preceded the Penn
Summit by nearly a decade, in which
little advancement in the situations of
women worldwide has been seen.
During Penn’s three-day summit,
which was jointly sponsored by Penn’s
School of Nursing and School of
Medicine, nearly 450 attendees and participants
from 31 countries convened to
share experiences and data in the hopes
of creating new knowledge as well as
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