Lillian D. Wald

Born in 1867, she trained as a nurse in New York and became deeply affected by the poverty and illness she saw on the city’s Lower East Side. In the 1890s she helped found what became the Henry Street Settlement, where she and other nurses cared for families in their homes and built a model for modern public health nursing.

Her work reached far beyond bedside care. She supported school nursing, playgrounds, better housing, and child welfare, and she was also active in major reform movements of her time, including women’s suffrage, civil rights efforts, and peace advocacy.

Wald died in 1940, but her influence can still be seen in community health, visiting nurse services, and the idea that good healthcare depends on social conditions as well as medicine.