INTRODUCING

The Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH)

MISSION
The Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH) is a catalytic nurse-inspired
grassroots movement to increase public awareness about the priority of health — in all of its
facets — and to empower 15 million nurses who deliver 80% of healthcare worldwide.

NIGH’s initiatives are giving nurses a voice and new potential for their unique contributions
to health and well-being for all. NIGH’s Mission follows in the footsteps of Florence
Nightingale [1820-1910] the founder of modern secular nursing. She was also a health
policy advocate, global networker, environmentalist, social reformer and mass media
strategist. She called all of these endeavors “Health Nursing.”

WORLDVIEW
Global health is intertwined at the grassroots with the health of people—as
individuals, families, communities and society — as the ‘common ground’ of all humanity.

The vulnerability of the world community is increasingly evident.

Global health—our own health—depends upon others who are committed to caring
for us. Everyone on this planet will need healthcare today, tomorrow or the not-to-distant
future. Our own health is vitally inter-dependant with the health and well-being of
nurses, midwives and other health care workers. Today's critical and chronic global
nursing shortage focuses this stark reality.

Now more than ever, nurses need to be strengthened and supported—worldwide, and
in every community—to continue, increase and sustainably-develop their contributions
throughout this 21st century.

Globalization and related technological advances provide unprecedented opportunities

to network with others of like-mind and heart—to strengthen and improve the quality of
life in our global village.

Most of today's youth have never known a world without the Internet. Unlike previous
generations, they easily assume a sense of the global perspective as their birthright. Many
are seeking global relevance in their priorities and activities, in their future plans, in
the careers they choose and in their role models.

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In her time, Florence Nightingale was a widely-appreciated public conscience in every part
of the English-speaking world, and beyond, in Latin America, Asia, Afica and throughout the
Islamic World. What would she have done with E-mail, the Internet, Social Media,
Video-Conferencing and worldwide Webcasting?

NIGH seeks to fulfill her vision of a healthy world with all these capacities and tools.

MANDATES
• Create a force for global health by raising global public awareness and encouraging
relevant action.
• Stimulate a paradigm shift for humanity empowering nurses as global citizens and
catalysts for change.
• Strengthen the contributions of the worldwide community of nurses and related
healthcare workers.
• Engage leading-edge technology to accomplish these mandates.

How Are These Goals Being Accomplished?

• Community Engagement through commitments to the Nightingale Declaration for a
Healthy World at www.NightingaleDeclaration.net
• Capacity Building—encouraging nurses with the media tools and skills to engage their
communities in improving health and to address the need for nursing recruitment,
renewal and retention
• Constellation Building (new word for Networks) including through the Internet, all mass
media, video-conferencing and related Tele-Nursing and Tele-Health “Communities
of Practice”
• Communication on a global scale, including with 3 timely integrated worldwide strategies:
• to “Mobilize Public Opinion for the Health of Nations”
[proposed to be endorsed by UN Resolution]
• to honor and celebrate the 2010 International Year of the Nurse/
Centennial of Florence Nightingale with nurses around the world
working together to advocate for global health, including for all eight
UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
• to establish and implement efforts toward achieving “Healthy People on a
Healthy Planet by 2020” [the Bicentennial of Nightingale’s birth].

NIGH’s Five Themes for Achieving a Healthy World

• Personal Wellness and Self-Care
• Healthy Homes and Workplace Wellness
• Cross-Cultural Understanding and “Health Diplomacy”
• Environmental Determinants of Health
• Social Determinants of Health

In 2003, a few people founded NIGH to collectively bring expertise to these issues. NIGH
has non-profit status — US 501(c) 3 — and has grown to include many collaborating
professional associations, universities and hospitals. More 20,000 individuals from 110
countries have since have joined this project. A further 1000 of these are leaders who
represent several million constituents. All this is reflected and developing with NIGH’s
leading-edge global Internet presence online at www.NightingaleDeclaration.net.
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