Nursing career
Wald worked for a time at the New York Juvenile Asylum, an orphanage where conditions were poor. By 1893, she left medical school and started to teach a home class on nursing for poor immigrant families on New York City's Lower East Side at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls. Shortly thereafter, she began to care for sick Lower East Side residents as a visiting nurse. Along with another nurse, Mary Brewster, she moved into a spartan room near her patients, in order to care for them better. Around that time she coined the term "public health nurse" to describe nurses whose work is integrated into the public community.[3]
Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement. The organization attracted the attention of prominent Jewish philanthropist Jacob Schiff, who secretly provided Wald the means to more effectively help the "poor Russian Jews" whose care she provided. She had 27 nurses on staff by 1906, and she succeeded in attracting broader financial support from such gentiles as Elizabeth Milbank Anderson.[4] By 1913 the staff had grown to 92 people. The Henry Street Settlement eventually expanded into the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.[5]
Wald advocated for nursing in public schools, and her ideas led the New York Board of Health to organize the first public nursing system in the world. She was the first president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing. Wald established a nursing insurance partnership with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company that became a model for many other corporate projects. She suggested a national health insurance plan and helped to found the Columbia University School of Nursing.[2] Wald authored two books relating to her community health work, The House on Henry Street (1911) and Windows on Henry Street (1934).
Community outreach and advocacy
Wald also taught women how to cook and sew, provided recreational activities for families, and was involved in the labor movement. Out of her concern for women's working conditions, she helped to found the Women's Trade Union League in 1903 and later served as a member of the executive committee of the New York City League. In 1910, Wald and several colleagues went on a six-month tour of Hawaii, Japan, China, and Russia, a trip that increased her involvement in worldwide humanitarian issues.[3]
In 1915, Wald founded the Henry Street Neighborhood Playhouse. She was an early leader of the Child Labor Committee, which became the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC).[2] The group lobbied for federal child labor laws and promoted childhood education. In the 1920s, the organization proposed an amendment to the U.S. constitution that would have banned child labor.[6]
Wald was also concerned about the treatment of African-Americans. As a civil rights activist, she insisted that all Henry Street classes be racially integrated. In 1909, she became a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).[7] The organization's first major public conference opened at the Henry Street Settlement.[8]
Wald organized New York City campaigns for suffrage, marched to protest the entry of the United States into World War I, joined the Woman's Peace Party and helped to establish the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1915 she was elected president of the newly formed American Union Against Militarism (AUAM). She remained involved with the AUAM's daughter organizations, the Foreign Policy Organization and the American Civil Liberties Union, after the United States joined the war.[3]
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Wald
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