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Collection Records of the Johns Hopkins University School of Health Services

Description

Key

111977

Type

Text

Dates

1972-1979, inclusive

Creator

Corporate name, Johns Hopkins University. School of Health Services

Administrative/Biographical History

Opened in 1973, the Johns Hopkins University School of Health Services developed out of efforts to reimagine workforce development within health care in the late 1960s. Johns Hopkins needed to meet the demands for skilled health workers in response to increasingly complex technology and to address the expansion of patient visits brought about by Medicare and Medicaid. At the same time an ideological movement to make routine health care more accessible to underprivileged communities put pressure on the health care fields to develop new models for healthcare delivery utilizing primary care practitioners.
In 1966, the Johns Hopkins Medical School Advisory Board formed a Committee on Allied Health Professions chaired by Russell Morgan, which issued a report which lead the University in 1967 to conduct a feasibility study to work toward the formation of a new school. At the same time The Rouse Company approached leaders at Johns Hopkins about forming a prepaid comprehensive medical care program for the future residents of its planned community in Columbia, Maryland. This request led the Hospital and University Trustees to approve the formation of the Columbia and East Baltimore Medical Plans in 1968 to meet community healthcare needs in both suburban and urban environments where they operated ambulatory health centers. When David Rogers became the new Dean of the School of Medicine in 1968, he recruited Robert Heyssel to Johns Hopkins where Heyssel established the Office of Health Care Programs with responsibility for the new comprehensive health care systems in Columbia and East Baltimore. In 1969 Malcolm Peterson arrived at Johns Hopkins to establish a Health Services Research and Development Center as an interdisciplinary research arm to study and experiment with how to reorganize the health care system and develop new staffing patterns utilizing Physicians Assistants and Nurse Practitioners to deliver primary health care. In 1970 the Joint Committee of Trustees established the Center for Allied Health Careers where Dennis Carlson developed and coordinated education and training programs for new middle-level health professionals, some of which had already sprung up spontaneously in clinical departments to meet staffing needs but without offering academic credit. In 1971 the University Boards of Trustees approved the Johns Hopkins University Center for Allied Health Careers’ recommendation for the establishment of a new Johns Hopkins University School of Health Services on the condition that it be funded by outside sources.
The new school's overall mission was to provide comprehensive, broad-based programs for all non-physician medical professionals. In 1972, Malcolm Peterson was appointed Dean of the School, and Archie Golden was appointed as the founding Program Director of the Health Associate Program. Golden was a pediatrician with experience in training community health workers in Peru with Project HOPE and whom Peterson had hired in 1970 as his assistant Director at the Health Services Research and Development Center. Initially, the School of Health Services only offered programs for Health Assistants and short term certificate training for nurse practitioners. In 1972, Golden collaborated to establish the Health Assistant Program that awarded associate degrees from Essex Community College and a certificate from the School of Health Services while based at the clinical facilities at Johns Hopkins. The school received a grant of $3 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 1973 to support the development of the Health Associate and Nurse Practitioner programs. It officially opened that September with the first class of Health Associate students, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree awarded by Johns Hopkins University after 2 year of upper level coursework and clinical experience. The US Health Resources and Services Administration provided additional grant funding to Golden for the Health Associate Program. Starting in 1972, the school offered a 1 year certificate program for Pediatric Nurse Practitioners aimed at registered nurses who wanted additional certification to be able to deliver primary care. It was based on an existing program to develop clinical skills of nurses working at the Comprehensive Child Care Program. An additional program for Adult Nurse Practitioners began in 1973. The school phased out the Nurse Practitioner certificate programs in 1977.
The new School of Health Services opened in Hampton House, formerly the living quarters for students and staff of the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing. In 1970, the Johns Hopkins Hospital announced it would close its 3 year nursing diploma program due to declining enrollment brought on by increased competition from baccalaureate degree programs, and its last class graduated in May 1973. Since the 1920s the alumni of the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing had continually petitioned the University to provide academic credit for its programs with limited success. The School of Health Services’ incorporation of a nursing education program was a response to this demand by the university administration. In 1974, Kay Partridge was appointed Director of the Nursing Education Program, and in 1975 the first class of academic Nursing Education students was admitted to a 2 year upper level baccalaureate program.
Previously established continuing education and clinical training programs within the medical institutions also found a home at the new School of Health Services within its Center for Allied Health Careers, later known as the Center for Health Services Careers. Essex Community College’s programs to train clinical laboratory technicians and nuclear medicine technicians collaborated with the departments of Laboratory Medicine and Radiological Sciences in the medical school to provide clinical training. Faculty from the Department of Environmental Medicine at the School of Hygiene and Public Health taught in an Occupational Health Training Program for the State of Maryland. The Johns Hopkins Hospital provided clinical training and classes in biological sciences for Nurse Technicians and Pediatric Trauma employees. The Health Sciences Careers Program started as a work study program for Baltimore City high school students, especially African American students from the nearby Dunbar High School, to introduce them to medical careers and employment.
The programs in Health Associates and Nursing, while sharing much common ground, were kept emphatically separate. The Health Associates program wanted to expand on general practice and patient care while avoiding the connotations of nursing, which many understood to be negative. Nursing, due to its feminine persona and restricted function, was often considered subservient to the rest of the medical profession. The Nursing program, on the other hand, wanted to change the role of nursing from the inside by re-organizing and enlarging upon nurses' roles in the health field. In doing so the program hoped to attract more men and raise the profile of nursing in general. To this end, the Nursing Education program insisted on academic, professional curricula that was clearly delineated from technical training programs. The Nursing Education program also pushed for high academic standards for applicants, a policy contradictory to the Health Associates program, which wanted to recruit students from Maryland community colleges as a way to both improve local job opportunities and provide better grassroots health care. Golden articulated the curriculum of the school in publications including An Inventory for Primary Health Care Practice in 1976, and along with Carlson, Jan Hagen, and other faculty of the Health Associates program, The Art of Teaching Primary Care, in 1982. They adapted the medical model of clinical training established by the School of Medicine into a progressive educational model to train health care workers within a health care ladder where individuals could increase their skill and functions. The curriculum included classes in biological sciences, behavioral and social sciences, and arts and humanities and utilized the core elements of primary care and population health, behavioral medicine, and problem-based learning.
Tensions between Health Associate program and Nursing program were hard to avoid, as both sides worried that the other would demean them and undermine the other's aims. Conflicts between the School of Health Services' programs were exacerbated by outside pressures. A number of medical school faculty members were opposed to some of the schools' ideological principles, and the School for Hygiene and Public Health expressed concern that certain aspects of the Health Associates program were undermining the funding potential for some of its own projects. There were also personal conflicts within the school's administration. In June of 1977, Peterson demanded Partridge's resignation, ostensibly for problems with the nursing curriculum. This sparked a series of faculty protests, culminating in a unanimous vote of no confidence in Peterson and a demand for his own resignation. University President Steven Muller intervened and Peterson remained dean; however, the School of Health Services was unable to attract additional outside funding to sustain the program. In 1977, Hopkins dropped its sponsorship of the Health Assistant Program which continued successfully at Essex Community College. Facing major operating deficits, the school announced its closure in January of 1978. The school programs remained in effect for previously-enrolled Health Associate and Nursing Education students until they graduated in 1979. The Health Associates Program graduated 5 classes and the Nursing Education Program graduated 3 classes of students who easily found employment despite the challenges that led to the school’s closure.

Scope and Content

The bulk of the Collection consists of School of Health Services catalogs, course materials for the health associates and nursing programs, student records, correspondence, committee records, grant records, and resources relating to curriculum and student development. Publications related to the school include The Art of Teaching Primary Care (1982), as well as the school newsletter and recruitment materials. There are also records of the correspondence between Malcolm Peterson and Kay Partridge, and various students and administrators relating to Partridge's dismissal.
The Records of the Johns Hopkins University School of Health Services, apart from providing sources relating to its administrative history, provide insights into attempts in the 1960s to 1970s to restructure medical learning and the health care system in general. The experimental nature of the school is reflected in minutes of the Organizational Development Committee where faculty and staff worked out issues of power and participation. Records document the efforts at Johns Hopkins to recruit a more diverse workforce to mid-level health professional jobs, including women and underrepresented minorities, within the context of the civil rights movement. It is a particularly rich source for historians of medicine and gender, as records focus on the Nursing School's mandate and operation within the broader context of women's employment and feminism in the 1970s.

Language

English

Administration

Accession

2008-078

Composed Of

Found 1 record(s)

Available Actions	Reference Code and Titlesort by Reference Code and Title ascending	Key (Collection)sort by Key (Collection) ascending	Dates	Record Levelsort by Record Level ascending	Hierarchysort by Hierarchy ascending
	The Johns Hopkins University School of Health Services Catalogs	304993	1973-1978	Record group/Fonds	CollectionRecords of the Johns Hopkins University School of Health Services

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