Kiyoko Kamibeppu, RN, PhD, FAAN, is Professor, Department of Family Nursing, Division of Health Sciences & Nursing, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, Japan. Her research focuses on childhood cancer survivorship and prevention of child abuse. Her research team has developed and provided a seminar program for professionals caring childhood cancer survivors and their families. For more than a decade, she has advocated for the offering of preventative child abuse interventions during pregnancy, which is now a priority in the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare in Japan. She and her research team are planning an innovative study focused on multiple violence in families internationally, which will reveal how intimate partner violence, elderly abuse, and child abuse are related to each other. Dr. Kamibeppu is currently chairperson of the Japanese Association for Research in Family Nursing (JARFN) and the Japanese Society of Pediatric Oncology Nursing (JSPON), and she has just joined the editorial board of the Journal of Family Nursing (JFN).

For more information please contact IFNA member, Kiyoko Kamibeppu: [email protected]

Susan Sullivan-Bolyai DNSc, CNS, RN, FAAN is a Professor in Nursing and Pediatrics and the Associate Dean for Research and Innovation in the Graduate School of Nursing at University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Her research focuses on children with T1D and their families, specifically on the day-to-day management of the chronic condition. She has developed and implemented numerous family-nurse driven interventions that include booster education and peer mentoring for both the youth and their parents. She and her colleague Dr. Carol Bova recently developed a peer mentor support measure to capture the value of working with a peer mentor on diabetes self-management, a unique concept compared to general social support. She and her interprofessional colleagues are also developing developmentally scaffolded diabetes education materials that are interactive and visual (RO1 submission, Feb. 2020, NINR). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Family Nursing and the Journal of Pediatric Nursing. She continues to mentor PhD nursing students in intervention (including the MOST design) and qualitative descriptive research methods. She was awarded the ENRS Suzanne Feetham Nurse Scientist Family Research Award in 2015.

For more information, contact IFNA member, Dr. Susan Sullivan-Bolyai: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-sullivan-bolyai-981583b/

Luke T. Russell, PhD, CFLE-P, is an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Science in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at Illinois State University. His research investigates how individuals living in diverse family structures (single-parent, post-divorce, stepfamilies, cohabiting families) organize their relationships, engage in strategies that promote resilience, and maintain family-members’ health and well-being. He has also contributed as an evaluator and continuous quality improvement co-lead on federal, state, and institutionally funded projects to investigate how broader social institutions (e.g., health care systems, schools, and government agencies) can better function as supportive resources for structurally diverse families. A core component of his research agenda addresses how family, pediatric, and school-based nursing professionals can effectively serve pediatric patients with chronic conditions who split their time among two households and may receive support from a wide variety of family caregivers.

For more information, contact IFNA member Dr. Luke Russell: [email protected]

Twitter Handle: @LTR_HDFS

LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-t-russell-phd-28b82732/

Véronique de Goumoëns, RN, MSN, CNS, is a PhD candidate in nursing sciences at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Her dissertation focuses on the development of family nursing assessment and intervention for acquired brain injury, including the early phase of hospitalization. In partnership with families and healthcare professionals, she developed a new evidence-based intervention based on Family Nursing Systems Theory, named SAFIR^Ó. The intervention is currently being tested in a feasibility study in the clinical department of neurosciences at the Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland.

She contributes to the Family Nursing curriculum development for Bachelor and Master nursing Students, at the HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland and the Institute for Higher Education and Research in Healthcare (Faculty of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne), respectively. Integrating “Family Nursing” and “Patient and Family Centered-Care“ approaches, her teaching focuses on the development of student’s competencies in the care of families. Her involvement in clinical practice, research, and teaching enable her to contribute to the development of Family Nursing in the context of French-speaking Switzerland.

As a board member of the Swiss National Association For Nursing Sciences (VFP-APSI), Véronique de Goumoëns is also committed to promote Nursing at the national level, particularly in advanced nursing practice.

Véronique is currently a co-leader of the IFNA Student Engagement Group that was formed in August 2019 at IFNC14.

For more information contact IFNA member, Véronique de Goumoëns at [email protected].

Twitter: @Vero_deGoumoens 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/véronique-de-goumoëns-6796b35a

2020 “International Year of the Nurse and Midwife”:

IFNA President’s Letter of Designation 

The World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board has designated 2020 as the “International Year of the Nurse and Midwife”, in honor of the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. The Board of Directors of the International Family Nursing Association (IFNA) declares alliance and support for this designation. Three important initiatives are part of this designation; the State of the World’s Nursing Report, The NursingNow! Campaign, and The Nightingale Challenge.

The State of the World’s Nursing Report

The year 2020 is significant for WHO because nurses and midwives have a significant role in the  WHO’s 13^th General Programme of Work (GPW13) targets. Specifically, these targets are to strengthen universal health coverage, address health emergencies, and promote healthier populations. The WHO is leading the development of the first-ever “State of the World’s Nursing” report which will be launched in 2020, prior to the 73rd World Health Assembly. The report will describe the state of the nursing workforce in WHO Member States, and provide an assessment of “fitness for purpose” relative to the GPW13 targets. WHO is also a partner in The State of the World’s Midwifery 2020 report, which will be launched around the same time.

The NursingNow! Campaign The NursingNow! Campaign, is a three-year international effort (2018-2020) to improve health globally by raising the status of nursing that will culminate in 2020 by supporting country-level dissemination and policy dialogue around the State of the World’s Nursing report.

The Nightingale Challenge

The Nightingale Challenge is a related global movement aiming to contribute to the development of the next generation of nurses and nurse midwives as leaders. The Nightingale Challenge asks every health employer around the world to dedicate to providing leadership and development training for a group of nurses and midwives during the 2020 Nightingale Challenge.

The Mission of the International Family Nursing Association (IFNA) is to Transform Family Health by:

• Serving as a unifying force and voice for family nursing globally,
• Sharing knowledge, practices, and skills to enhance and nurture family nursing practice; and,
• Providing family nursing leadership through education, research, scholarship, socialization and collegial exchange on all aspects of family nursing.

Core Values of IFNA:

The International Family Nursing Association embraces a compassionate family focus on health, social justice, human dignity and respect for all.

Therefore:

IFNA supports the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife 2020 with a goal of promoting the visibility of nurses and nurses working with families around the world. IFNA joins the Year of the Nurse and Year of the Midwife Campaign specifically to: 

• improve health globally by raising the profile and status of family nurses worldwide;
• raise the profile of the concept of family in nursing and family health in varied global contexts;
• influence policymakers to support family health, and,
• support nurses working with families to lead, learn, and build a global family nursing movement.

We encourage you to think about how you may contribute to promoting the visibility of nurses and nurses working with families around the world during this important year. Several activities are being planned for IFNA members in the next several months so that we can all learn about your contributions. Please stay tuned! 

Sincerely,

IFNA President, Sonja J. Meiers, PhD, RN, PHN 

IFNA Board of Directors