SON: About the School

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First UW Nursing Students Focused on Public Health

Sudents in the first nursing course ever offered at the UW are shown
here in a rare photo from the University of Washington archives.

In 1918, as epidemic outbreaks of tuberculosis and typhoid raged through Washington, and a worldwide influenza outbreak was taking more American lives than World War I, the Washington Tuberculosis Association asked the UW to offer public health courses for registered nurses. Students in the first public health course to include fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest are shown here in a rare photo from UW archives. Their field instructor for the three-month summer course was Elizabeth Sterling Soule, state supervisor of nurses for the Washington Tuberculosis Association and Red Cross Visiting Nurses Services, who took over the public health course the following year and went on to become founding dean of the School of Nursing. Today, the School of Nursing is still educating nurses to respond to public health crises and the care of individuals with infectious diseases, including antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS. (see related story) Although pulse indicators show steady improvements in Washington's health over the past ten years, with 91 percent of the population reporting good health overall, nursing students today are also learning to analyze such data for hidden health disparities and the implications for public policy and issues of social justice.

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