'Dreams and awakenings': The Rockefeller Foundation and public health nursing education, 1913-1930

Between 1913 and 1930, the Rockefeller Foundation donated {dollar}2.3 million to nursing activities in the United States. The sum, although small, helped to legitimize the professional agenda of a small group of nurse leaders, and to establish precedents that have had a profound impact on nursing and nursing education during this century. Examples of Foundation investments in nursing, such as underwriting the Goldmark Report, endowment of the Yale School of Nursing, and the sponsorship of the Peabody-Vanderbilt Joint Program in Public Health Nursing, illustrate a waxing and waning of interest that is historically significant because of the insight it provides into the internal as well as the external pressures that were brought to bear on applications for funding of nursing activities. These historical case examples help us to clarify current issues and develop more accurate perceptions of professions as socially-defined fields of work, demonstrating the possibilities and limitations of private sector-professional partnerships.; Based on archival and primary source material, this study shows that Rockefeller Foundation interest in nursing was stimulated by the perceived need for adequately trained public health nurses during and immediately following World War I. The Foundation's disengagement from American nursing a decade later had to do with the metamorphosis of its agenda during the 1920s. Structural, operational, and philosophical changes that occurred within the Rockefeller Foundation dictated actions more often than did the demand or need for public health nurses. Foundation policies were also influenced by the values and ambitions of certain Foundation officers, interdivisional conflicts, and the persuasive abilities of a small group of medical, public health and nursing advisors. The Foundation's program for nursing education in the United States was indirectly related to its programs in Europe, Asia and South America. Although emphasis has been placed on Foundation involvement in the United States, the relationship to the European program is explored and suggestions have been made for additional investigation.