The 67th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) took place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA, from 6-17 March. This year’s priority theme was “innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” Nurses are the largest segment of healthcare professionals worldwide, with over 4 million nurses just in the United States and over 28 million around the world. Therefore, nurses are best suited to positively contribute to innovative technological changes, digital health literacy, and digital transformations in healthcare, all of which impact our ability to empower women and girls globally, as well as achieve gender equality.
Digital health includes categories such as mobile health (mHealth), telemedicine and telehealth, health information technologies, wearable devices, and other personalized medicine technologies. Digital health and digital transformations of healthcare are pivotal in meeting population health needs as well as advancing health equity globally. The World Health Organization advocates for the leveraging of digital health as a reliable, safe, equitable, secure, and sustainable avenue for addressing global health needs. Particularly for women and girls, digital health promises to close the gaps in care that produce disparate outcomes for these subpopulations worldwide.
To meet these goals, digital health literacy is foundational. According to Healthy People 2030, health literacy has two components—personal health literacy and organizational health literacy. Similarly, digital health literacy should encompass both scopes. Nurses are uniquely positioned to contribute to both personal digital health literacy of the patients they serve as well the organizational digital literacy by being innovators, consumers, implementors, and evaluators of digital technologies in various spheres. This is in line with President Ken Dion’s Organizational Call to Action, which challenges nurses to Be Bold and aspire to be part of the solution in their various spheres of influence.
Some strategies to promote digital health literacy include proactive capacity building and educational reform to help the next generation of nurses to embrace digital health and digital technologies as means to improve population outcomes worldwide. Additionally, we need to develop, implement, and evaluate diverse implementation protocols for digital literacy, while at the same time optimizing health outcomes using these technologies. Lastly, we need to invest in opportunities that maximize digital health technologies while concurrently building healthcare workers’ capacity to harness these technologies for sustainable development.
Sigma, in collaboration with the International Council of Nurses and the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics (JHPIEGO) held a parallel event at CSW titled “The Digital Transformation of the Nursing Workforce.” The objectives for the session were:
1. To discuss and explore nursing’s role in promoting digital health and technologies.
2. To discuss the challenges of and solutions to the digital transformation of the nursing workforce.
3. To discuss nursing’s role in achieving gender equity through digital transformation.
My presentation focused on digital literacy and transformation as vehicles to address social, structural, and systemic determinants of health and strategies for utilizing digital health to promote health equity for women and minoritized groups.
Sigma United Nations Liaison Patrick Chiu and Sigma Youth Representative Aimée Giselle Horcasitas-Tovar also attended sessions at this year’s CSW.
Patrick attended the Civil Society Briefing which was organized by the NGO CSW Forum. The purpose of this briefing was to provide a space to hear from UN Member States, UN women, and civil society representatives about the CSW outcome document and negotiation processes. Key themes within the agreed conclusions (the outcome of the Commission) included the following:
1. Developing digital tools and services to address the needs of all women and girls.
2. Mainstreaming gender in digital policies to remove barriers to equal access.
3. Promoting policies and programs to achieve gender parity in emerging scientific and technological fields.
4. Developing gender-responsive innovation that challenges gender stereotypes and negative social norms.
Aimée attended a session on breaking the gender digital gap in Latin America and the Caribbean. As a Latina, Aimée is particularly passionate about this work. There is a remarkable divide in access to digital health and digital technologies in Latin America and the Caribbean. This has been attributed to traditional gender roles and how different genders are socialized within the cultural context, which has inadvertently disadvantaged women and girls. She also attended the Youth Forum as a Sigma Youth Representative. The call to action for this year was challenging governments and other participating NGOs to send delegates to the Youth Forum and to ensure adequate dissemination of important topics discussed to their constituents.
Mercy N. Mumba, PhD, RN, CMSRN, FAAN, is an Associate Professor in the Capstone College of Nursing at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA, and one of Sigma’s United Nations Liaisons. She is a member of Sigma’s Epsilon Omega Chapter.
Patrick Chiu, PhD, RN, CGNC, is a policy and professional practice consultant, assistant lecturer, and postdoctoral fellow. In addition to being President-Elect of Mu Sigma Chapter, he is also a Sigma United Nations Liaison.
Aimée Giselle Horcasitas-Tovar, BSN, RN, is a registered nurse at the Instituto Nacional de Cancerología in Chihuahua, Mexico, and one of Sigma’s United Nations Youth Representatives. She is a member of Sigma’s Tau Alpha Chapter.