Lillian Wald, founder of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, was a trailblazer in health care and social services. A groundbreaking visionary, she coined the phrase public health nursing. She was not only the first public health nurse, but the founder and president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing. She was one of the most influential pioneers in the history of nursing, public health, social reform, and civil rights. And from her early vision born of her tenement experience, the Henry Street Settlement came into being.
The settlement became the home base and formal vehicle for her mission, delivering health care and a wide range of educational programs and support services for the community. Her classes, clubs, and community-based programs addressed pressing social problems, and her visiting nurses focused their efforts on bettering the communities in which they lived. As Henry Street grew and Lillian Wald's ever-broadening vision expanded, she advocated for improved working conditions for women with a minimum wage, enacting child labor laws, and changing living conditions for New York's struggling immigrants.
The idea of an on-site public school nurse led to nurses in four city schools, which soon became standard practice. across the U.S. Meanwhile, the settlement extended its nursing services to additional boroughs in the city, having a growing impact.
In 1914, the death rates recorded by the visiting nurse staff for children under two, the age most susceptible to pneumonia, were at least 30% lower than those reported by hospitals. And when Spanish flu struck in 1918, Lillian Wald turned the city into a vast field hospital and devised an infectious disease tracking system that saved countless lives. These and other dramatic results are a testament to Lillian's leadership and contributions at the forefront of public health and community-based care. Throughout her career, Lillian Wald never lost sight that the health of the community affected the health of the individual. She was an innovator, Introducing preventive health care methods that looked beyond just medical care.
Lillian Wald made drastic improvements to the health of people in the neighborhood, New York City, and beyond. She transformed public health. initiated many of the advancements in equality for women and completely changed the nation's approach to the treatment of children.
Best known as the woman at the head of Henry Street Settlement's mahogany table, Lillian Wald's Lady of the House. legacy is of an unwavering commitment to the improved health of New Yorkers at home and in the community. She died in 1940, and four years later, the settlement's nursing division became a freestanding entity, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Today, VNSNY continues to fulfill her vision. We are proud to be carrying Lillian Wald's legacy forward and to be a part of the broader public health and social support network.
that she so brilliantly pioneered.