preview

What Is The Difference Between Lillian Wald And Jacob Riis

Decent Essays
Open Document

Lillian Wald was a nurse who saw first hand the poor conditions of people living in the cities. Wald saw the need for healthcare among the large Jewish immigrant population in New York City. From this point, she worked to extend the services of public health nurses and in 1902, she initiated the first American public school nursing program in NYC. The program was very successful as…..and due to its success, Wald molded a great model and her idea set off a chain reaction. In response to her idea, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company began a nursing service for its industrial policyholders. Met Life’s following of Wald’s school nursing program inspired other insurance companies to do the same. In 1910, as a result of a series of nursing lectures …show more content…

Lillian Wald's approach was using her medical background to get organizations on board with her idea and influence others to do the same, ultimately making her methods successful. As a result of her efforts, there was less spread of sickness throughout schools and people were taken off the streets and put into settlement houses where they were given food and ideal and sanitary living conditions. Disease frequency began to diminish due to the less crowdedness and more sanitary environments. Jacob Riis’s method was to expose “the other half” and the reality of their living conditions not otherwise shown to the wealthier classes. His method was successful as people felt guilty and wanted to make a change for the poverty-stricken class. Thus, more effort was put in by the wealthy to help and get the less fortunate living in humane conditions. Nonetheless, Lillian Wald’s method was more successfull. By aiming to influence larger organizations, she was able to get a more widespread effort. As well as this, her implementation of settlement houses was more effective in getting people off of the street versus photographs which only got the point

Get Access