Dr. Jillian Pintye, Assistant Professor in the Behavioral Nursing and Health Informatics Department at the School of Nursing, was recognized by the Washington Global Health Alliance as a 2019 Pioneers Rising Leader. Judges noted that her impatience to prevent HIV is already making a difference for pregnant women and has expanded HIV prevention options for policymakers. Congratulations, Dr. Pintye!
Read more about the other award winners and more about her project here
Since the creation of the Center for Global Health Nursing in 2016, Dr. Sarah Gimbel has been working hard together with first Dr. Bob Onders and more recently, Dr. Kyle Pohl from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) to build a doctoral fellowship opportunity for recent DNP graduates. The Global Rural Health Fellowship (GRHF) was initiated in the Departments of Emergency and Internal Medicine at UW. This unique post-doctoral fellowship specifically for DNP graduates aims to provide recently graduated and licensed nurse practitioners the knowledge, leadership skills and hands-on experiences necessary to become effective leaders, clinicians, managers, and advocates in the field of global and rural health. In turn, Tribal Health Organizations in rural areas of Alaska who work with ANTHC will benefit from increased access to advanced nursing care.
The ANTHC is a non-profit organization which strives to meet the health needs of Alaska Native and American Indian people living in Alaska. ANTHC is the largest, most comprehensive Tribal Health Organization in the United States and Alaska’s second-largest health employer with more than 3,000 employees offering an array of health services to people throughout our nation’s largest state.
This partnership between the UW Center for Global Health Nursing and ANTHC will allow recent DNP graduates to live in rural Alaska for up to 12-18 months followed an additional 3-6 months in a low middle-income country (LMIC). This fellowship provides clinicians with experience serving vulnerable populations in both rural Alaska and in an LMIC. DNPs undergo a competitive application process which includes interviews with the UW as well as ANTHC coordinators and directors at participating sites in Alaska.
This year, we are excited to announce our first placement in Alaska as part of this fellowship. On August 1st, Dr. Krysta Byrnes (DNP-FNP) will be the first DNP GRHF. Krysta will be spending 12 months working in the Eastern Aleutian Islands with periodic visits to Anchorage for training opportunities including one month at UW in Seattle for a global health course with other clinical fellows. Krysta is “passionate about partnering with patients and communities, empowering them to meet their own goals and to live full, productive, and healthy lives.” She was born in Japan within a universal health care system and worked abroad in Vietnam. She has also worked extensively in rural Washington state. All of these experiences helped shape her worldview that healthcare is a right for all people. After her 12 months in Alaska, she plans to spend time in either Malawi or Peru working to improve clinical capacity in marginalized settings. Her plans after the GRHF will be to work in primary care and use her experiences to advocate for ways to make the health system work for everyone including the most disenfranchised.
To kick off Spring Quarter, numerous faculty and students from the University of Washington School of Nursing participated in the 2019 Western Institute of Nursing (WIN) Conference. WIN is one of four regional nursing research organizations in the US. Members of WIN include individual researchers, clinicians, educators, students, academic institutions, and health care organizations. Every year, they host researchers from their membership at their annual research conference. This year, the research conference took place on April 10-13th in San Diego, CA and the Center for Global Health Nursing is pleased to announce that three posters were presented by students active in the global health community. Congratulations!
Title: Fostering DNP-PhD Student Collaboration: A Global Project
Authors: Yvette Rodriguez (PhD Student), Morgan Busse (DNP-FNP student), Marissa Masihdas (DNP-FNP student), Jane Kim (DNP-FNP student), Dr. Sarah Gimbel
Title: A learning Approach for Nurses Providing Option B+ Services in Mozambique
Authors: Jane Kim (DNP-FNP Student), Dr. Sarah Gimbel
(Not Pictured) Title: Patient Needs and Recommendations to Refine a Tuberculosis Support App
Authors: Yvette Rodriguez (PhD Student), Dr. Sarah Iribarren
By: Sandra Kolberg (ABSN Student) and Jessica Lee (BSN Student)
Being a part of the Nursing program at the University of Washington has provided us with some incredible opportunities. We receive constant encouragement to learn and grow through diverse experiences on campus, within the community, or even internationally. One of the experiences available to us was the short-term nursing studies program at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. After receiving an email outlining the program and encouraging us to apply, UW was going to send two nursing students to learn about aging populations from a global health perspective. Nursing students from four other countries would participate and we would spend the week immersed in Japanese culture while discussing how nursing practice varied between our respective countries.
Our time spent at Keio University was not only a great learning experience, but also beneficial to our future careers as nurses. During this nursing 
exchange, we were able to collaborate with students from Japan, China, Korea, and the United Kingdom to learn more about nursing systems in other countries and brainstorm ideas on how to alleviate the issue of an increasingly aging society. We spent our time in Keio University’ classrooms listening to lectures from professors and we also had hands-on experience at Keio Hospital and shadowing home healthcare nurses. Seeing how the healthcare system runs in Japan was a humbling experience, as the nurses treat their patients with the utmost compassion and kindness. However, the most meaningful part of this trip was being able to connect with the nursing students from other countries. Nursing is a field that requires continual learning and growth. As such, it was a great opportunity to learn firsthand what it means and what it is like to be a nurse in other parts of the world so that we can learn how to be better nurses as well.
The learning and growth that occurred on this trip exceeded all expectations. We were welcomed with open arms to participate and observe how another country provides care to its people through nursing. The other students from each country were so warm and welcoming; wonderful friendships developed regardless of any cultural or language barrier. We were able to laugh and joke with new friends and colleagues, experience a new culture, and discuss changes we would like to see in our own healthcare systems. We were able to inspire each other through each country’s strengths, and develop our own ideals we would like to put into practice. We are incredibly thankful for this experience, and will take our newly developed global perspective into our careers as professional nurses.
Basia Belza PhD, RN, FAAN, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences (NTUNHS). Dr. Belza is the Director to the deTornyay Center for Healthy Aging and has worked with UW Grad and now Professor at NTUNHS, Dr. Tiffany Wang, as she was a PhD student at the UW. The signing ceremony took place on March 21, 2019, as Dr. Belza visited Taipei to give a Plenary Presentation on March 22 at the International Conference on Precision Healthcare. Dr. Belza had this to say about the new partnership:
“Nursing science is experiencing robust growth. As such, Schools of Nursing are continuing to look for global collaborations. This memorandum of understanding has the potential to be a win-win for both the UW SoN and the NTUNHS, Taipei, Taiwan. Through strengthening and formalizing our international connections we have the opportunity to expand our study abroad programs, share our teaching initiatives across the ocean, and conduct collaborative research on shared issues with participants from various cultures. The energy and enthusiasm is high at NTUNHS especially with but not limited to our alums from our PhD in Nursing Science program.”
Join the Center for Global Health Nursing by welcoming Weichao Yuwen and Visiting Scholar Wenzhe Hua as they speak on the topic of “Challenges and Opportunities in Parent Engagement in Neonatal Intensive Care Units in China”.
Weichao Yuwen teaches and conducts research in using technologies to promote sleep health and family health in children with chronic conditions. She is also collaborating with several hospitals and schools of nursing in China to promote family-centered care in pediatric hospital units. Weichao is a member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing, Sleep Research Society, and a founding member of the Pacific-Northwest Chinese Nurses Association.