Integration of the Sustainable Development Goals in Baccalaureate Nursing Education

At a United Nations (UN) General Assembly Summit in 2015, a group of world leaders endorsed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to address global issues that provoke global health concerns (Mamede, 2018; UN, n. d.). The Sustainable Development Goals focus on population issues like poverty, hunger, gender equality, health promotion, education, healthcare disparities, and peace; the goals also address environmental factors that influence health like clean water, pollution, energy, and climate (Beck, Dossey, & Rosa, 2018; UN, n. d.). These goals are compatible with the work of nurses who are the largest group of healthcare providers globally (Mamede, 2018; Benton & Ferguson, 2016; Preto, Batista, Ventura, & Mendes, 2015). It has been recommended that nursing education curriculum emphasize the importance of population health components, such as those addressed in the SDG, both locally and globally (Beck, Dossey, & Rosa, 2018; Bvumbwe & Mtshali, 2018; Preto, Batista, Ventura, & Mendes, 2015).

Due to the importance of teaching future nurses about global health implications, a small, rural university developed curriculum changes that integrated the UN Sustainable Development Goals that provided students with a better understanding of global health issues. The purpose of this presentation is to describe an innovative teaching strategy that introduces undergraduate nursing students to global health issues and provides them with a foundation to critically analyze global health concerns in order to determine interventions to decrease the impact of these health issues.

Within an undergraduate community health nursing course, a nurse educator lectured on the impact of global health. Time was allotted to introduce the SDG with the students including discussion of health care disparities among some populations; the students were also given time to explore the SDG web page. They were then divided into groups and instructed to research two of the SDG and determine three nursing or collaborative interventions to decrease the impact of these global health issues. Students were also asked to decide how they, personally, can impact these specific global health issues. The students then presented their research findings and recommended interventions to the class followed by a class discussion of the results. This innovative teaching strategy allowed students to evaluate ways in which nurses, both individually and as a whole, can influence global health.

Nursing students should be taught about the essential role they will play in informing the impact of social determinants of health (Hughes, 2017; Benton & Ferguson, 2016; Thompson, 2016). Usually most learning in undergraduate community health education takes place in the local community; however, it is essential for nursing education to include classroom theory related to global health including political, economic, social, and cultural factors that influence health (Preto, Batista, Ventura, & Mendes, 2015). This presentation will provide convention participants with practical interventions they can utilize in their curriculum to increase student awareness of global health issues and to determine approaches that nurses can utilize to decrease these issues.