Haiti’s challenged and fragmented healthcare system does not utilize its most powerful and skilled force of healthcare workers – that is, licensed nurses – to support, build, and transform the country’s healthcare. Nurses can, and must, take their place as leaders of healthcare change: they have the skills and resources to act as agents of transformation and lead the innovative solutions necessary to address the nation’s greatest public health problems.
NECH-CIEH is creating a collaborative network of nurses, led by nurses for nurses, who go out into the community, help train other nurses, and teach and promote health practices. By doing so, we are bridging traditional healthcare delivery and community development and empowering nurses to lead positive change beyond the circumscribed perception of nurses as little more than “helpers” to the physicians who traditionally have led the delivery of healthcare.
NECH-CIEH is thus developing a new role for nurses: importantly, under the leadership of our Executive Director, Claudia Thomas Riché, we are working in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in order to change how nurses are currently being trained so that they can be effective health changemakers.
NECH-CIEH empowers nurses to create sustainable change in Haiti. Because nursing is an interdisciplinary profession, and nurses are trained in a number of skills, they can work across sectors – from healthcare to business, and everything in between, creating social impact. Ultimately, NECH-CIEH hopes to promote the role of nurses, show that nurses are industrious and not secondary to doctors, and establish nurses as a dynamic pillar of wellbeing in Haiti. NECH-CIEH envisions a future Haiti in which a nurse leads the ministry of health.