THE C HRONICLE Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing
Spring 2022 Vol. 34 ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR P. 3
BARBARA BATES CENTER RESUMES IN-PERSON RESEARCH VISITS P. 5
NURSES AND COVID-19: THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST P. 6
THE FUTURE OF THE PAST P. 7
RECENT ACQUISITIONS P. 10
CELEBRATING SCHOLARSHIP: FALSE DAWN AND NURSING THE NATION P. 11
Center students Ravenne Aponte, Andre Rosario, and Kailee Steger explore Center collections in the Ellen D. Baer Reading Room
DIGITIZING FOR THE FUTURE P. 13
OUR DONORS P. 15
The Future of the Past
CALENDAR P. 16
The Barbara Bates Center is thrilled to announce the latest addition to our long trajectory of training scholars interested in generating new knowledge regarding how nursing, health care, and society have grappled with how to care for those who are ill, or vulnerable, or underrepresented. Continued on page 7.
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CENTER ADVISORY BOARD SUSAN BEHREND JULIE FAIRMAN, DIRECTOR EMERITA VANESSA NORTHINGTON GAMBLE SANDRA LEWENSON, ADVISORY BOARD CHAIR JOAN LYNAUGH, DIRECTOR EMERITA MARIAN MATEZ ANNEMARIE MCALLISTER RICHARD J. PINOLA ELISE ROBINSON PIZZI NEVILLE E. STRUMPF ZANE ROBINSON WOLF ROBERT ARONOWITZ (CONSULTANT) GATES RHODES (CONSULTANT)
CENTER DIRECTOR
Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing
PATRICIA D’ANTONIO, PHD, RN, FAAN
CENTER FACULTY CYNTHIA CONNOLLY, PHD, RN, FAAN, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR JULIE FAIRMAN, PHD, RN, FAAN, DIRECTOR EMERITA
CENTER FELLOWS RACHEL ALLEN, PHD, PMHNP-BC, RNP, RN J. MARGO BROOKS-CARTHON, PHD, CRNP ROBIN COGAN, MED, RN, NCSN, FAAN MICHAEL SHIYUNG LIU, PHD JULIE SOCHALSKI, PHD, RN, FAAN
ABOUT THE CENTER The mission of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing is to thoughtfully analyze the past in order to create and foster new ideas for the future, while simultaneously promoting Penn Nursing’s vision to advance nursing science and produce leaders that will transform healthcare globally. The Bates 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 Center dedicates itself to a leadership role in advancing the public’s knowledge of the history of nursing and healthcare.
CENTER HOURS CENTER STAFF JESSICA CLARK, MA, ARCHIVIST ELISA STROH, CENTER ADMINISTRATOR
CENTER VOLUNTEERS THORA WILLIAMS
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Center hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Scholars planning to conduct research at the Center should e-mail nhistory@ nursing.upenn.edu or call 215-898-4502. Our Center staff will respond with a description of the scope and content of relevant materials in the various collections.
Successes in a Pandemic World
Letter from Director Patricia D’Antonio Congratulations are in order. To our staff: Jessica Clark, our archivist, and Elisa Stroh, our administrative coordinator. Despite the challenges of working virtually while the campus and the Bates Center suspended in person operations, they successfully met researchers’ requests by providing digitized copies of archival documents, seamlessly continuing to process requests for transcripts and other materials, and revising all of our operating procedures to reflect best archival practices. At the same time, they kept digitization processes going and continued with and transitioned our online repositories to ArchivesSpace, the new University supported archival management system. Jessica and Elisa also deserve credit for the overwhelming success of our virtual seminars and events, including the book launches of Karen Buhler-Wilkerson’s False Dawn and Jean Whelan’s Nursing the Nation. And the best news: our archives are now open to scholars and students here at Penn and across the country. We, of course, have new procedures in place (I, for one, did not know that researchers will need to wash off any residual hand sanitizer because of the potential damage its chemicals can cause to documents). But we have already welcomed our first researcher and expect many more in the upcoming months. And congratulations to Dr. Julie Fairman, selected by the Rockefeller Foundation to participate in its prestigious Academic Writing Residency Program in Bellagio, Italy. There, in May 2022, on the beautiful shores of Lake Como, Julie and her collaborating partner, Dr. Karen Flynn from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will work on an interdisciplinary project that draws together many contemporary conversations in American society by exploring health as a civil right. This project engages with citizenship, human rights, and social justice in both the United States and in the Caribbean. This is an exciting and critically important project. Congratulations to our students, Ravenne Aponte, Andre Rosario, and Kailee Steger. They have all successfully passed the first milestone in their scholarly trajectory: the qualifying exam. You will read more about them in this edition of The Chronicle. But they are all doing what doctoral students do so well. They are asking new historical questions and framing new historical analyses that will move us both deeper into and beyond what we hold as conventional historical narratives about nurses, race, and vulnerable populations.
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You may notice one name missing from our list of students: Hafeeza Anchrum. She is now Dr. Hafeeza Anchrum, having successfully defended her dissertation on the experiences of Black nursing students and graduates of the Mercy-Douglass Hospital School of Nursing during the Civil Rights era. Hafeeza is now a post-doctoral fellow in the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society, under the direction of PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts. Fortunately for us, she is not too far away.
Recent Penn Doctoral program graduate Dr. Hafeeza Anchrum
And congratulations to Bates Center fellow Robin Cogan on her induction as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Robin was honored for her tireless advocacy of children’s health and the effective role of school nurses in combatting the twin scourge of school violence and infectious diseases. Robin is also a master of social media, and her plaintive question, “why are we always so willing to play Russian roulette with the lives of our children” went “viral” this past year. This quote, I think, also encapsulates what makes Robin’s advocacy so effective: it comes from a deep sense of the history that still informs how we value children in our society. For now, we will take a deep breath, look at the more recent publications and presentations we have been doing as we move more deeply into the historical roots of diversity, racism, and challenges in nursing and healthcare, and plan for the future. As historians, we are absolutely “allergic” to making predictions about the future. But some things seem clear. We need, for example, to be more adept at exploiting new technologies not only in our research but also in our teaching. We need to further explore how archival repositories themselves can perpetuate the processes of exclusion that have hampered a true telling of our history. And, as I write in a soon-to-be published essay in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, a new history of nursing may not be about nurses (or indeed, physicians) at all: it may be about a history of healthcare in which different actors come together or break apart to accommodate different perspectives about what is in “the patient’s best interest.”
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Barbara Bates Center Resumes In-person Research Visits The Barbara Bates Center welcomes researchers back to the Joan E. Lynaugh Archives and Special Collections for the resumption of in-person research. Researcher policies have been updated according to University guidelines regarding COVID-19.
In accordance with the University of Pennsylvania’s guidelines on COVID-19, the Center now requires: • Masks for all researchers for the duration of their visit; masks must cover the mouth and nose. Researchers are required to double mask (layering a cloth mask on top of a disposable mask) or to wear a KN95 or N95 mask. • Visitors to campus and to University-sponsored events and gatherings to be fully vaccinated ◊ Before arriving on campus, visitors must complete a PennOpen Campus pre-screening on the day they visit. They must be prepared to present their Green Pass on request. • Appointments must be made at least two weeks in advance to allow time for quarantining of materials and ensure staff availability. • Researchers must wash their hands upon arrival to the Center and after. Hand sanitizer should not be used before handling collections as it can degrade materials over time. • Visitors to the Center who have been exposed to COVID-19 or feel ill should not come to the Center and should instead email nhistory@nursing.upenn.edu to re-schedule their appointment for a later date. • Researchers must sign the supplemental researcher access form (found on the Center’s website) in order to conduct research at the Center
Please note, in-person research policies are subject to change following city, state, and University guidelines. For the most up to date information please contact the Center at nhistory@nursing.upenn.edu.
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Nurses and COVID-19: The Presence of the Past
In April 2020, when we were all still reeling at the havoc that the pandemic was wreaking on American life, Bates Center faculty Patricia D’Antonio, Julie Fairman, and Cindy Connolly met to consider how to use our historical expertise to inform a nursing response to yet another crisis. Hospitals in Pennsylvania and around the nation were struggling to find enough nurses to staff their COVID-19 intensive care units and emergency rooms. The COVID-19 pandemic draws many comparisons to the 1918 Flu. Some of them were well-reasoned and grounded in evidence. Most were not. We decided to undertake an historically contextualized analysis of how the 1918 flu pandemic helped shape Pennsylvania nursing’s current regula-
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tory apparatus. This seemed especially important given that Pennsylvania’s Governor had just taken the unusual step of making it easier for nurses to temporarily practice across state lines to address the crisis.
could use this list of graduate (registered) nurses as a “nucleus” around which all flu-related health care delivery throughout the state could occur. As a result of this record, nurses could be quickly deployed to emergency infirmaries, public hospitals, the Visiting Nurse Association, or wherever they were needed to provide direct care and supervise volunteers. This experience directly informed the next revision of the Nurse Practice Act in 1919 in which there was consensus, for the first time, that at least some nurses should be registered.
When COVID-19 struck, Pennsylvania was again at a cross-roads in terms of nurse regulation. All state regulatory bodies, we recommended, should immediately put in place mechanisms to move from state-specific nursing Our research, published in scholarly licensure regulations to the national journals, video, policy brief, opinion COMPACT system by 2025. pieces, and blogs, (found online at bit. ly/covidhist) revealed some interest- A national registration system, the ing findings. When the 1918 flu struck COMPACT mechanism, had been Philadelphia, the concept of nurse slowly gaining strength since 2000. “registration” (sanction by a state While legislation had been introduced authority to deliver nursing care) was many times to make Pennsylvania a completely voluntary. But it played a COMPACT state, it had always stalled. helpful role in the nursing response. As Using our findings to make our arguthe only central repository of nursing ment, the Bates Center became one personnel in Pennsylvania, officials of a number of voices pressing legislahad a record of the numbers of regis- tors to pass the legislation which the tered nurses in the state. Authorities Governor did on July 1, 2021!
The Future of the Past Ravenne Aponte Hi everyone! My name is Ravenne Aponte and I am a second year PhD student. I am originally from Miami, Florida and earned my Bachelor’s in African American Studies and Health Disparities at the University of Florida and then completed an accelerated BSN program at Duke University. Upon graduation, I spent the next few years working as a Clinical Nurse in a Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and Nurse Supervisor at a home health agency. It was in these roles, as I cared for patients in the hospital, their homes, and communities that I found myself searching for answers to complex issues in nursing that were shaped by factors beyond the bedside. I saw history as a way to explore these complexities and understand the various ways we (nurses) have functioned and evolved over time. My research interests include the history of nursing, social justice, and workforce diversity. Currently, I am focused on the roles and contributions of nurses in the Black women’s club movement during the early 20th century and their impact on community health programs. Ravenne Aponte, BA, RN, BSN
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Andre Rosario When I was an undergraduate nurs- I took classes with Bates Center those seminars blew my mind. I’d ing student here at Penn, I developed faculty. I often attended the Bates start to see how a broader political an interest in the history of nursing. Center seminar series. So many of and economic context shaped the issues that nurses have faced. Now that I am back at Penn as a PhD student, I feel honored to be affiliated with the Bates Center. I hope to someday produce scholarship that will also give nurses a historical perspective on our profession. I’m interested in studying nurse migration, especially from the Philippines to the United States. The topic is personal. My mom had studied nursing in the Philippines, and she and my family moved to the United States before I was born here. She worked as a critical-care nurse up until her retirement a few years ago. As I worked as a nurse, I’d meet nurses who immigrated from the Philippines, India, and Korea. We would talk, and I would learn more about what motivated them on an individual level to move, as well as what caused many nurses to migrate on a broader political and economic level. I am excited to go through the PhD program with Kailee and Ravenne! It’s been nice to be alongside students with varied historical interests. Andre Rosario, BSN, RN
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Kailee Steger I began my nursing career after receiving my Bachelor’s in History and Master’s in Clinical Anatomy. As a pediatric intensive care nurse and travel adult intensive care nurse during the COVID-19 pandemic, I sought out new experiences to widen both my understanding of nursing, but also of our healthcare system. My past degree in history became a source of enjoyment and inspiration as I moved through my career. It allowed me to reexamine my role as a nurse and seek out opportunities to combine both history and healthcare as a way to better understand the nursing profession and those we care for, which eventually led me to the Barbara Bates Center. Specifically, my work as a pediatric intensive care nurse inspired me to explore how the history of children could re-inform my understanding of U.S. history, health initiatives, and the nursing profession. I am currently interested in the history of school health and examining how schools act as a microcosm of society and what impact that has had on children. Kailee Steger, MS, BSN
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From the Collections: Recent Acquisitions Nurse Journal, and Public Health Nursing. These materials will be added to the Center’s book collection and are in the process of being catalogued (70 cubic feet). Ruth Watson Lubic-This summer, Center staff coordinated with Dr. Lubic to receive some of her final materials for her collection. In total, this addition is 20 cubic feet, which will be processed into the existing collection here at the Center.
L: Ruth Watson Lubic, CNM, EdD, FAAN, FACNM; R: Philippine Nurses Association of America October 2010 Eastern Regional Conference; Afaf Meleis, keynote speaker
The Bates Center has been privileged to obtain several new accessions and collections that will enhance and complement our current holdings. These additions highlight the lives and activities of nursing organizations and nurses. Below is a selection of materials donated in the past two years during the pandemic. Jessica Clark, Archivist Jane Jordan- We are honored to receive the letters from Jane Jordan from her time as a Penn Nursing student in the 1970s. These letters to family and friends reveal insights to her activities, education, and student life at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (0.5 cubic feet).
Philippine Nurses Association of America (PNAA) Pennsylvania Chapter records- The PNAA and its PA chapter uphold a mission to “foster the positive image and welfare of Filipino-American nurses, promote professional excellence, and contribute to significant outcomes to healthcare and society through education, research, and clinical practice.” The PA Chapter materials include meeting minutes, flyers, and other records related to its members’ activities (0.5 cubic feet).
Sisters Archives, relating to Sr. Teresita’s time as a midwifery lecturer at Penn. During her career, she established the Nurse-Midwifery Distance Learning Training Program for the recruitment and training of certified nurse-midwives in underserved areas of rural Pennsylvania (3 cubic feet). To make a donation to help preserve the legacy of these records, donate American Journal of Nursing at http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/ Sr. Teresita Hinnegan- The (AJN)- The Center has received history/contribute/ or contact the Center is pleased to have been given several journal sets from the AJN Center at nhistory@nursing.upenn. materials from the Medical Mission library, including the AJN, Canadian edu for more information. 10 The Chronicle
Celebrating Scholarship: False Dawn and Nursing the Nation
L: False Dawn: The Rise and Decline of Public Health Nursing, R: Nursing the Nation: Building the Nurse Labor Force
The Center recently hosted two book launches; the re-publication of False Dawn: The Rise and Decline of Public Health Nursing, by Karen Buhler-Wilkerson, PhD, RN, FAAN, and Nursing the Nation: Building the Nurse Labor Force, by Jean C. Whelan, PhD, RN.
The Center celebrated the re-publication of Buhler-Wilkerson’s work this past spring, April 22, 2021. False Dawn, originally published in 1989, was the culmination of Karen Buhler-Wilkerson’s doctoral research on public health nursing in the United States. Her book
remains the definitive work on the history of public health nursing in America, and documents its successes, failures, and the “rise and fall” of public health nursing in the U.S. The re-publication of her work includes a new foreword from Julie Fairman, PhD, RN, FAAN, and Susan The Chronicle
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M. Reverby, PhD and an updated bibliography provided by Sandra Lewenson, PhD, RN, FAAN. Karen Buhler-Wilkerson was director of the Barbara Bates Center from 1995 until her retirement from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in 2006. The event allowed attendees a chance to honor her extraordinary influence on the profession of nursing, on scholarship, and on her students, colleagues, friends, and family. On October 14, 2021, the Center celebrated the launch of Jean Whelan’s Nursing the Nation: Building the Nurse Labor Force. Whelan’s timely work offers a historical analysis of the relationship between the development of nurse employment arrangements with patients and institutions, and the appearance of nurse shortages from 1890 to 1950. The response to nursing supply and demand problems by health care institutions and policy-making organizations failed to address nurse workforce issues adequately, and this failure resulted in, at times, profound and lengthy nurse shortages. Whelan’s work, published after her passing in 2017, was shepherded through by Julie Fairman. Nursing the Nation book launch served as a moment to remember Jean Whelan in both her professional and personal life, with moving tributes from colleagues, friends, and family members. Both books are available for discounted purchase from Rutgers University Press; use code RFLR19 for 30% off and free shipping. Top: Jean C. Whelan, PhD, RN; Bottom: Karen Buhler-Wilkerson, PhD, RN, FAAN
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Digitizing for the Future The Center continues to expand its digitization efforts. As the pandemic has shown, online access to collections, even parts of them, are a growing and necessary aspect of the Center’s outreach and mission. As reported in the fall e-newsletter, Center staff have created a new home for digitized materials. The Digitized Collections and Sites page now serves as the Center’s hub for all digitized materials available to researchers who may not be able to visit the Center. The digitizing goal of the Center is to provide access to the Center’s archival materials so that researchers can use the documents and images as they need for their projects on their own time. The Center currently offers the ability to view digitized materials by collection for researchers who are interested in a certain collection or organization. The Center also offers the ability for researchers to view digitized materials organized thematically. These themed sites allow researchers to view different collections organized around a certain topic and provide context and background information that enhances the online materials and sheds light on why certain Student File, Camilla Alberta Grant, Class of 1921 Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School; Mercy-Douglass Hospital Records, MC 78.
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materials within a collection have been scanned. The materials from Mercy-Douglass Hospital School of Nursing, for example, were scanned
and digitized as part of a grant project for In Her Own Right, which explored woman’s activism in the century before suffrage.
The records do not solely document Black women’s efforts in suffrage and activism, but also the school requirements, education standards, the type of women schools were attracting to their schools, and so forth. The same can be said for the Chloe Cudsworth Littlefield diaries, or for the collection materials that were curated for Calm, Cool, and Courageous: Nursing and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. The Center continues this work, with an expansion to the National League for Nursing (NLN) digitizing project, now with extended funding through June 2022. Throughout the pandemic, Center staff have had to be creative and flexible to continue digitizing while working remotely. Fortunately, staff were able to complete the work and upload pdf versions of 58 annual convention proceedings. The Center now looks to digitize more publications as well as enhance educational information on the current NLN site.
Student File, Lovice Jones, Class of 1920, Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School; Mercy-Douglass Hospital Records, MC 78.
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The Center is also proud to begin work on a multi-year project to digitize the Joan E. Lynaugh collection with generous funding coordinated by Bates Center board member Richard Pinola. Work will focus on digitizing the materials of a pioneer Penn Nursing leader who reshaped primary and geriatric nursing care at Penn and around the country. This project enables access to papers that document innovation and sustained change in nursing education and practice.
Donors October 1, 2020 – September 30, 2021
The Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing gratefully acknowledges all of its supporters for their generosity.
Dr. Linda H. Aiken
Ms. Jeanne J. Kiefner
Alumnae Association of Mercy Douglass Hospital School of Nursing
Mrs. Pedie Killebrew
Dr. Madalon M. Amenta
Mrs. Shirley B. Layfield
Dr. Rima D. Apple
Dr. Jan L. Lee
Mr. Henry P. Baer, Esquire
Dr. Charles E. Letocha
Ms. Susan Baer
Dr. Richard J. Lewenson
Ms. Holly Barrett
Dr. Sandra B. Lewenson
Dr. Alice J. Baumgart
Dr. Ruth Lubic
Mr. Daniel B. Behrend
Dr. Joan E. Lynaugh
Mrs. Susan Weiss Behrend
Mrs. Marian Bronstein Matez
Dr. Geertje Boschma
Dr. Annemarie McAllister
Dr. Ann Marie Walsh Brennan
Mrs. Mary V. McDevitt
Solomon & Sylvia Bronstein Foundation
Dr. Adrian S. Melissinos
Dr. Joy Buck
Dr. Elizabeth M. Norman
Ms. Melodie K. Chenevert
Nurses Charitable Trust
Dr. Pamela Frances Cipriano
Dr. Ann L. O’Sullivan
Dr. Cynthia A. Connolly
Ms. Maral Palanjian
Dr. Patricia O. D’Antonio
Dr. Steven J. Peitzman
Dr. Lynore D. Desilets
Mrs. Krista M. Pinola
Episcopal Hospital Nurses Alumni Association
Elise & Charles Pizzi Fund
Dr. Lois K. Evans
Dr. Elizabeth A. Reedy
Dr. Julie A. Fairman
Dr. Susan Reverby
Dr. Ronald M. Fairman
Mr. Gates Rhodes
Dr. Suzanne L. Feetham
Dr. Suzanne C. Smeltzer
Dr. Marilyn E. Flood
Mrs. Beverly Peril Stern
Gaines Family Charitable Gift Fund
Dr. Marilyn R. Stringer
Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble
Mr. John Strumpf
Mr. William C. Garrow
Dr. Neville E. Strumpf
Dr. Mary Eckenrode Gibson
Dr. Joyce E. Thompson
Dr. Gloria Hagopian
Dr. Jeannine M. Uribe
Dr. Laura Lucia Hayman
Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Philadelphia
Mrs. Hannah L. Henderson
Dr. Barbra M. Wall
Mr. and Mrs. Stephen W. Holt
Ms. Mary M. Walton
Mr. Vincent Hughes
Dr. Rosalyn J. Watts
Isleworth Partners Inc.
Dr. Fay W. Whitney
Karcis & Seward Giving Fund
Dr. Karen A. Wolf
Mrs. Mary Ellen Kenworthey
Dr. Zane Robinson Wolf
Ms. Lisa C. Kricun
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SPRING 2022 CALENDAR The annual meeting of the Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science (SAHMS) is scheduled for March 10-12, 2022. Please visit www.sahms.net for more information. The Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry (ECBCNHI) 5th Agnes Dillon Randolph International Nursing History Conference, will be held virtually on March 18-19, 2022. For more information about the conference, please contact the Program Chair, Dominique Tobbell, at dtobbell@virginia.edu.
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The 95th annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) will be held April 21-24, 2022 in Saratoga Springs, New York. More information can be found at www.histmed.org. The 2022 joint meeting of the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine and the Canadian Association for the History of Nursing will take place June 4 - 6, 2022; this conference will be virtual. More information can be found at www.cahn-achn.ca or https://cshm-schm.ca/.
The American Association for the History of Nursing (AAHN) 39th annual conference will be held September 15 – 17 2022, in Lexington, Kentucky. Please visit www. aahn.org for more information.