Julie Fairman, Phd, RN, FAAN, Director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania will kickoff the conference at 7:30 am with her address: “The Right to Write: Nurse Practitioners and Prescriptive Privileges.” Dr. Fairman's research focuses on the history of 20th century health care issues pervading contemporary nursing practice. Her recent work addresses the relationship between gender, nursing and technology and the history of the social construction of professional boundaries. A short break/continental breakfast will follow.

Morning and afternoon breakout sessions will follow and feature the following speakers and topics:
First Session:
• Rima D. Apple, Ph.D. will discuss health educators in rural Wisconsin from the 1920’s to the 1940’s;
• Joyce Penrose, Dr. PH, FNP-BC, will discuss the relationship between nursing and Planned Parenthood; and
• Jennifer Nelson, Ph.D., will provide insight into women’s reproductive freedom post Roe v. Wade.

Second Session:
The afternoon sessions will feature Sibyl E. Moses, Ph.D., Constance Putnam, Ph.D., and Linda Maldonado RN, MS.
• Dr. Moses will discuss African-American health care at the community level in Newark, New Jersey;
• Dr. Putnam will demonstrate the importance of a rural New England physican’s wife to his practice; and finally
• Linda Maldonado will use the oral histories of two mid-wives, one in Philadelphia, one in Washington, DC, to elucidate midwives activism between 1970 and 1990.

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/ or contact Stacey Peeples at peepless@pahosp.com.

About the conference
The History of Women’s Health Conference is sponsored by the Pennsylvania Hospital Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pennsylvania Hospital Historic Collections and the Pennsylvania Hospital Professional Staff. It was created to celebrate the evolution of women’s health from its inception to present. Each year a new theme is chosen and lecturers picked to address this theme from a research and clinical focus and across medical disciplines.

The conference is free and open to the public. To register, please RSVP to Stacey Peeples at 215-829-5434 or peepless@pahosp.com by April 25, 2011.

Nursing contact hours (3.50) will be granted to nurses attending this program in its entirety and submitting an evaluation for the program. Pennsylvania Hospital is an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the PA State Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on accreditation. There is no conflict of interest on the part of any presenter. There is no commercial support for this educational offering.