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Andrea Baumann, director of the Global Health program and centre director of McMaster University’s PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre, delivered a webinar on April 6, 2016: Nursing Workforce Planning and Analysis: A Macro View. The webinar highlighted the scope of nursing roles and responsibilities for advanced practice nurses (APN) in primary health care in North America

This webinar – the second in a series launched by McMaster School of Nursing in March 2016 – forms part of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) strategy for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) which calls for countries in Latin America to increase their number of primary health care providers, including APNs. Unlike the United States and Canada, countries that have depended largely on nurse practitioners and other types of APNs for quality primary care for decades, the licensed APN is a new concept in Latin America.

Ruta Valaitis, deputy director of the centre at McMaster, is leading the development of the webinar series, working with other faculty from the School of Nursing. The series focuses on APN capacity building as an outcome of the Universal Access to Health and Universal Health Coverage: Advanced Practice Nursing Summit, which McMaster hosted in April 2015.

Since 1992, McMaster University School of Nursing has been a PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre in in Primary Care Nursing and Health Human Resources. The Centre works collaboratively with faculty across disciplines at McMaster and in coordination with the Global Network of Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery. Andrea Baumann has been the centre’s director since its inception. She is also scientific director of the Nursing Health Services Research Unit (NHSRU), McMaster site.