Emily Hall
Emily Hall, MSN, MPH is a family nurse practitioner, Global Health Science PhD candidate and clinical faculty at University of California at San Francisco. She started her work in global health as an RN, joining a group affiliated with her hospital doing work in Rwanda. She has also worked in Haiti, and focuses on providing clinical education in low resource settings.
Her current role at UCSF is heading their Global Health Nursing Fellowship, a unique year long academic fellowship that aims to provide an opportunity for US educated nurses to have a training in global health. The fellowship, which is currently working on fundraising, includes a social medicine and curriculum with foundational global health education integrated with field experience in Haiti. The purpose of the program is to create collaboration and partnerships for nurses working in resource limited settings while providing support for US based nurses who desire to do that work.
I also asked Emily about other ways that nurses not affiliated with academia could become involved in Global Health. “Nurses have so many of the skills which can lead to fruitful purposeful global health work. Being creative about your skill set can help you find opportunities. For example, an organization may not be hiring for a nurse position or may not have other nurses working for them, but their needs are program management, supply chain, training, monitoring and evaluation. These are all tasks which nurses are familiar with. It can be helpful to research a focused clinical area (just pediatrics for example) or defined geographic area and find organizations doing work in that space. Make connections to learn more about what they are doing and make yourself known to them because opportunities may arise later. Also I really recommend working in your local community. The principals of global health are similar for vulnerable populations wherever they reside and you may be able to make a larger impact nearby