Global links.

Disparities in health status between American Indians and other groups in the United States have persisted throughout the 500 years since Europeans arrived in the Americas. Colonists, traders, missionaries, soldiers, physicians, and government officials have struggled to explain these disparities, invoking a wide range of possible causes. American Indians joined these debates, often suggesting different explanations. Europeans and Americans also struggled to respond to the disparities, sometimes working to relieve them, sometimes taking advantage of the ill health of American Indians. Economic and political interests have always affected both explanations of health disparities and responses to them, influencing which explanations were emphasized and which interventions were pursued. Tensions also appear in ongoing debates about the contributions of genetic and socioeconomic forces to the pervasive health disparities. Understanding how these economic and political forces have operated historically can explain both the persistence of the health disparities and the controversies that surround them.

Colonialism↗

PubMed2006

Can lessons be learned from history? The origins of the British imperial nurse labour market: a discussion paper.

The British government's involvement in overseas nurse recruitment originated in its imperial past when the Colonial Nursing Service was established in 1940 by the Colonial Office to unify the administration of British nurse appointments across the Empire. The Colonial Office unified recruitment arrangements for colonial nursing posts, effectively creating an imperial market in nursing labour, which arguably set the historical precedent for the greater flow of international nurse recruitment from and to the United Kingdom (UK). The recent implementation of the Nursing and Midwifery Council's Overseas Nurses Programme to regulate the registration route for international nurse recruits to the UK is symptomatic of growing international nurse migration. In a globalising marketplace, overseas nurse recruitment remains a significant supply factor in meeting the staffing needs of the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. The continuities between the historical case of the Colonial Nursing Service and the current prevalence of transnational nurse migration highlight a pervading tension between the professional agenda of nursing and recruiters' and governments' responses to market pressures.

Colonialism↗