News
October 2010
CEO Shares View on Demographics of Global Health
Barbara L. Nichols DHL, MS, RN, FAAN, chief executive officer of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS), returned in early October of 2010 to the UW–Madison School of Nursing—where two decades ago, she served as a faculty member—to present "Health Economics in the Global Health Care Workplace" to students in Health History and Patient Assessment, a course taught by Professor Linda Baumann, PhD, APRN-BC, FAAN.
Nichols, whose past roles included president of the American Nurses Association and secretary of the State of Wisconsin's Department of Regulation and Licensing, currently provides credentials evaluation and verification of education, registration, and licensure to health care professionals worldwide.
In her lecture, Nichols described globalization and migration as driving forces behind the rise of globally mobile populations, bringing new cultural dynamics and influence to religion, language, cultural practices, and norms across the United States. Nichols offered data from the Consortium on Health and Mobility to substantiate migration trends, which pose new challenges to U.S. health care systems:
- Nearly one billion people cross international borders annually; this number is predicted to increase to 1.5 billion per year in ten years.
- There are 192 million immigrants worldwide; 25 million immigrants come to the United States annually.
- In 2010, the United States has the largest migrant population in the world—42.8 million immigrants—followed by the Russian Federation (12.3M), Germany (10.8M) Saudi Arabia (7.3M), and Canada (7.2M).
- In 2050, 90 percent of the U.S. population growth will come from Asia.
"Two thirds of the world is nonwhite and non-Christian," Nichols said, "and 12 million nurses—the majority are women of color—provide the care." The collected data, she added, demonstrates that health care providers "can no longer conceptualize 'diseases over there' versus 'diseases seen here.'"
Nichols concluded the lecture by emphasizing the significance of advancing education in cultural competence and workforce diversity in order to shape humane and ethical systems in health care delivery throughout the United States.