Jennifer E. Dohrn

Jennifer Dohrn, CNM, DNP, FAAN is a Professor and Assistant Dean of the Office of Global Initiatives and director of the PAHO/WHO Collaborating Center for Advanced Practice Nursing at Columbia University School of Nursing. She has served communities locally and globally. As Director of Midwifery Services, she initiated the first freestanding maternity center in an inner city in the United States in the Bronx, New York. She has worked in Sub-Saharan African countries since 2003, helping to expand the role of nurses and midwives in primary and HIV care. Dr. Dohrn was the founding Project Director for the United States/PEPFAR-funded ICAP Global Nursing Capacity Building which provides technical assistance to build nursing and midwifery capacity in ten Sub-Saharan African countries in response to the HIV pandemic. At CUSON she has led the expansion of global clinical practicum experiences as central to nursing education in 15 countries in the Global South. She has worked extensively with the World Health Organization. Dr. Dohrn recently was part of an initiative to study the role of nurses and midwives in pandemic response through gathering oral histories of nurses who were on the frontline of care during the Ebola outbreak in western African countries, and nurses responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.  She has integrated her global experiences in complex humanitarian emergencies and racial injustice into two decades of teaching in midwifery and global health equity.  Her new book on the racialization of maternal health care in the US and models to change this, entitled ‘Mothers, Midwives and Reimagining Birthing in the Bronx: Breathe: Now Push’, was published 11/2023 by Palgrave/McMillan.