From Visiting Nurses to Public Health Nurses: Winston-Salem, NC 1905-1930

Simone Caron, Wake Forest University

Public health nursing grew out of the visiting nurse programs at settlement houses in Northeast and Midwest cities. Winston-Salem had no settlement houses, but the Home Moravian Church hired the first visiting nurse in 1906 to care for noncontagious patients at home. Visiting nurses’ responsibilities grew to include school inspections by 1911, and the following year Metropolitan Life Insurance Company hired visiting nurses to serve its policy holders. The US Public Health Service’s appointment of its first public health nurses in 1913 led to a public discourse regarding the merits of establishing public health nurses in Winston-Salem. While some critics dismissed it as one of many “fads” sweeping the nation, others asserted that the “public health nurse is about the most important factor in public health work,” even more important than the “health officer.” When the Winston-Salem City Health Department (CHD) was established in 1916, it hired two public health nurses, one White and one Black. Their duties initially included school inspection and control of contagious disease, but rapidly expanded to include “social as well as medical, preventative as well as curative” task such as infant and maternal welfare, tuberculosis care, sanitary inspections, and health education. By 1918, the City Health Department hired two additional public health nurses, and by 1921, the CHD employed 10. The financing of these positions gained support from the sale of Easter Seals and from contributions from the Red Cross Fund. This paper looks at the growth of public health nursing in Winston-Salem, NC, and argues that its growth was a result of the desire of a “progressive southern city” to follow national trends in preventative health; and of the cost-saving benefits of such preventative care for a rapidly expanding industrial city.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 221. Public Health and Race