Healing the World: An Online Program in Women’s Global Health Leadership
Reprinted from National Nurses United >>>
The First Academic Program Built from the Values of Bedside RNs
Brief Description of Women’s Global Health Leadership Course
National Nurses United offers an online certificate program in Women’s Global Health Leadership at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The certificate program was designed by the NNU Education Department and courses will be taught by NNU educators. Because Rutgers University is accredited, course credit will fulfill general education requirements at most universities and colleges throughout the country.
This academic program is the first ever built from the values of bedsides nurses: compassion for the world’s sick and suffering, a single-standard of care for all people, just distribution of life’s basic necessities, equal opportunities to fulfill our human potential, and commitment to building solidarity with all who share these core values. Students will come to understand patient advocacy as advocacy for humanity. Through this program of courses, NNU continues our work to create a world more aligned with RN values.
The Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers University
NNU is collaborating with the Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL) at Rutgers University because it is an internationally renowned consortium of academic-activist centers. The IWL is distinguished for providing leadership training to some of the world’s most formidable women leaders and is considered one of the best research institutes on women in the country. Programs at the IWL include the Center for American Women and Politics, the Institute for Research on Women, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, and the Center for Women and Work. The Rutgers’ Department of Women’s and Gender Studies is also part of this consortium.
Courses
A significant advantage of online coursework is great flexibility. Online students are not required to attend classes on the Rutgers campus. In consultation with instructors, you can complete coursework wherever you are, on flexible timelines, and at any time of the day or night.
NNU courses engage nurses and other community members in conversations about vital issues related to health and healthcare: economic inequality, climate change and other environmental crises; famine; epidemics; corporate healthcare providers and the consumer-driven healthcare model; health information technology; global health governance; international trade agreements; nurse migration; private pharmaceutical research, production, and distribution; commodity food speculation; genetic modification of living organisms; privatization of public resources and services; cuts in spending on social programs; human rights; and women’s movements for health around the world.
Courses examine the social, economic, political, and environmental forces that are contributing to worsening health and precarious existence in all regions of the world. Courses investigate the relationship between international economic policies and the delivery of healthcare globally. Particular attention is given to health disparities among different groups of women within and across nations, such as the concentration of infant and maternal mortality among low-income peoples, and growing rates of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Individual courses consider the effects of national debt, trade agreements, export agriculture programs, structural adjustment policies, and environmental depletion on nutrition and health. Courses consider the costs and consequences of women’s health problems, ranging from direct costs of care to the social and economic consequences for women, their families and communities. In addition, courses provide an overview of women’s international health activism and the mobilization of social and economic rights discourses as mechanisms to address health challenges in the twenty-first century.
The program is offering the following three courses for Fall Semester 2015 (September-December):
Global Women’s Health Movements (01:988:407)
This course identifies the global institutions and policies that most impact health globally. Students will discern how women’s non-governmental organizations have attempted to transform existing institutions and policies of global health governance such that people everywhere can lead healthier and more dignified lives. The course begins by detailing the colossal global health problematic to which women’s health movements respond, encouraging students to forge new ground by drawing connections among institutions of global governance and women’s health. The course culminates with a close examination of tactics utilized by women’s organizations around the world to social and economic conditions that attempt to actualize the dictum that healthcare is a human right, as stated in numerous international human rights instruments.
Health Consequences of Global Trade in Food Commodities (01:988:412)
Close to one billion people suffer from malnutrition and many more from food deprivation in the twenty-first century. As neoliberal trade policies have restructured national economies, new speculation in global commodities markets has limited access to food by the poor. This course investigates shifting modes of food production as local practices of subsistence agriculture have been replaced by export agriculture and global commodities markets. The course compares the consequences of these changes for women as consumers in the global North as well as for women as producers of subsistence in the global South. Examining impacts of global commodities markets on food distribution, diet, and health, the course also analyzes the health effects of the creation of consumer markets for processed foods.
Gendered Professions and the Transnational Care Economy (01:988:414)
This course examines how nursing and other women-dominated professions lie at the heart of what is known as the “care economy.” Involving work that requires intensive physical labor, person-to-person communication, and spatial proximity, the intimate nature of care work resists mechanization. In contrast to the production of commodities, the highly personalized labor of care is driven by human need rather than profit maximization. Focused on the cultivation and preservation of human capacities, nursing and other professions at the heart of the care economy resist routinization and automation. The course culminates in an exploration of recent efforts to heighten the profit-making potential of the care economy, and it considers the long-term implication of efforts to deskill and outsource care work.
Future course offerings will include:
Impacts of Economic Inequality on Women’s Health
Domestic and global economic inequality place significant numbers of people at high risk for health crises even as they are denied access to care. This course investigates the “pathogenic” aspects of economic inequality. It examines how systems of unequal resource distribution contribute to wide disparities of health risk, access to healthcare, and clinical outcomes. In addition, the affects of global trade and transnational migration on health costs, healthcare delivery systems, and the availability of healthcare professionals are explored. By tracing links between macro-economic policies and access to healthcare, the course analyzes pathologies suffered in the context of structural violence.
Gendered Health Impacts of Structural Adjustment Programs
Since the 1980s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have conditioned loans to poor countries on implementation of economic policy requirements known collectively as structural adjustment. Liberalizing trade, increasing export manufacturing, shifting from subsistence to export-oriented agriculture, and privatizing national assets and industries have all been hallmarks of structural adjustment policies. Comparing experiences in the global South with more recent developments in the European Union, this course provides a gendered analysis of the global health impacts of structural adjustment programs. It investigates why women are over-represented among those most negatively affected by public service cuts and the role of privatization in women’s increased caretaking burdens and decreased paid employment.
Health Consequences of Global Trade in Food Commodities
Close to one billion people suffer from malnutrition and many more from food deprivation in the twenty-first century. As neoliberal trade policies have restructured national economies, new speculation in global commodities markets has limited access to food by the poor. This course investigates shifting modes of food production as local practices of subsistence agriculture have been replaced by export agriculture and global commodities markets. The course compares the consequences of these changes for women as consumers in the global North as well as for women as producers of subsistence in the global South. Examining impacts of global commodities markets on food distribution, diet, and health, the course also analyzes the health effects of the creation of consumer markets for processed foods.
Health Consequences of the Global Trade in Pharmaceuticals
This course explores the political economy of the global pharmaceutical industry. Students will examine ethical issues such as: disproportionate investment in drugs for minor health problems while serious diseases affecting the poor and other marginalized groups remain insufficiently studied; inadequate vaccine development and manufacture; restrictions on the distribution of life-saving generic drugs in third world countries; overuse of antibiotics and the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria; and the role of the pharmaceutical lobby influencing healthcare.
Gendered Professions and the Transnational Care Economy
This course examines how nursing and other women-dominated professions lie at the heart of what is known as the “care economy.” Involving work that requires intensive physical labor, person-to-person communication, and spatial proximity, the intimate nature of care work resists mechanization. In contrast to the production of commodities, the highly personalized labor of care is driven by human need rather than profit maximization. Focused on the cultivation and preservation of human capacities, nursing and other professions at the heart of the care economy resist routinization and automation. The course culminates in an exploration of recent efforts to heighten the profit-making potential of the care economy, and it considers the long-term implication of efforts to deskill and outsource care work.
Global Women’s Health Movements
This course identifies the global institutions and policies that most impact health globally. Students will discern how women’s non-governmental organizations have attempted to transform existing institutions and policies of global health governance such that people everywhere can lead healthier and more dignified lives. The course begins by detailing the colossal global health problematic to which women’s health movements respond, encouraging students to forge new ground by drawing connections among institutions of global governance and women’s health. The course culminates with a close examination of tactics utilized by women’s organizations around the world to social and economic conditions that attempt to actualize the dictum that healthcare is a human right, as stated in numerous international human rights instruments.
The Growth Imperative, Global Ecology, and Women’s Health
In the last quarter century, the premise of the possibility of endless growth for the purpose of unlimited capital accumulation has met the inevitable challenges of resource exhaustion on a global scale and its human consequences. Markets and technological innovation are inadequate to solve the resulting environmental crises. Health consequences include illness caused by toxic industrial byproducts, injury from resource extraction processes such as nuclear fission and deep–water oil drilling, manifold health hazards of violent conflict over control of scarce resources in postcolonial states, and dangers that attend climate change. This course will address externalized business costs paid in the currency of human health.
Debt, Crisis, and Women’s Health
Growing national debt has become a feature of increasing numbers of nations over the past 60 years, heightening dependence on international financial institutions and restricting the sphere of freedom of national policy makers. Healthcare provision has been subjected to severe cuts as nations struggle to meet their debt obligations and stabilize their economies. Framing ongoing global economic crisis as a consequence of excess rather than scarcity, this course unsettles the conventional moral calculus of credit and debt, exploring the relationship between debt and economic crisis, and examining the impacts of austerity policies on women’s health. Austerity refers to policies that reduce public benefits and services, such as healthcare and education, meant to force countries into meeting their debt obligations. Comparing experiences of nations in various regions of the world, the course considers the effects of continued borrowing to pay debt interest on humanitarian concerns. In particular, the course analyzes who suffers for the sake of debt repayment and the magnitude of that gendered suffering in highly leveraged societies.
Registering for Courses
Tuition for courses is currently $3,034. National Nurses United is in the process of negotiating tuition rates with Rutgers. We offer a limited number of scholarships each term to NNU members interested in building global solidarity with those who share RN values of caring, compassion, and community. To apply for a full-tuition scholarship for a course, please submit a short essay (250 to 500 words) describing how the topic of the course will inform your RN patient advocacy. NNU members may apply for a scholarship for more than one course. A separate essay is required for each course for which an RN seeks a scholarship.
All interested scholarship applicants should submit their essay via email to with the subject line “Scholarship.”
Applicants also need to complete and submit this application cover sheet with their essay.
Certificate Requirements
Earning a Women’s Global Health Leadership Certificate will require completion of seven courses offered online through Rutgers University eCollege. See More >>>
To apply for a scholarship, email
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