Lessons Learned? Nurses and Health Demonstration Projects in New York City, 1920–1935

Abstract

This historical case study looks at two foundation-funded health demonstration projects in New York City from 1920 to 1935. It specifically examines the disciplinary interests, the work, and the aspirations of nurses and social workers as they tried to provide coordinated and cost-effective care to the individuals and families with whom they worked. It attends to the processes--not just the outcomes--involved in the coming together and moving apart of the different organizations, disciplinary interests, knowledge domains, and spheres of public and private responsibilities involved in caring for those in need. It locates the problems of coordination within disciplinary tensions as nurses and social worker--working within a web of gender, class, race, and power--sought to advance their own disciplinary interests even as they searched for better ways to care for the families in their charge.