The Yale School of Nursing (YSN) is pleased to play a key role in educating the nurse-leaders who will create and shape the future of healthcare nationally and globally.

Leadership means having an active role in defining the future. This past year we completed a five-year strategic plan that sets forth a roadmap for how we will educate nurses and midwives who are prepared to pursue that mission through excellence in clinical care, knowledge about effective advocacy, and a commitment to being at the tables where healthcare policy is made—locally, nationally, and globally.

I am proud to lead a school of nursing that focuses on helping people gain and maintain wellness by deploying evidence-based science. As astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.”  

As part of that effort, we have established an innovative Center for Aging Well. The center seeks evidence-based knowledge that informs decisions about how people can live not just longer, but also better. Both physical and mental health will be part of our research, which will be widely disseminated as part of our educational intent. We recognize the obligations and opportunities of being a school within a leading research university.

May of 2026 is YSN’s one hundredth commencement. To say that nursing and healthcare have changed a lot in the one hundred years since YSN was founded would be a considerable understatement. What nurses do, how they do it, and their role in the national and global healthcare system has changed enormously in a century, and it will continue changing as the American healthcare system advances in the next one hundred years. We are proud of contributions our graduates have made to the last century of nursing, and we are intensely focused on our role in leading nursing’s next century. YSN is committed to educating nurse-leaders who are prepared to be capable, innovative, and creative clinicians, researchers, executives, managers, policy makers, and educators. The future of nursing—and healthcare—is being shaped every day at YSN.

One of the most profound changes in the last one hundred years is that health is now a global as well as a national issue. We live in a world where new options for transportation and communication have created both challenges and opportunities. We have seen how air travel can facilitate the rapid spread of communicable diseases, while at the same time creating the opportunity for nurses and other healthcare professionals to work across borders. The internet has opened new options for global nursing education that optimizes use of human and financial resources. Researchers can now collaborate and cooperate globally, and research can be shared in minutes rather than months or years.

Our vision is global. We know and understand that health and wellness are not isolated to boundaries on a map. YSN is actively developing links to nursing and other institutions around the world so we can learn from each other, collaborate, and increase our understanding of the social determinants of how health and wellness are viewed in global populations. 

There are many issues and challenges in global healthcare. Solving those issues and meeting those challenges is a task that needs input and dedication from nurses everywhere. YSN and its graduates are creating and sustaining that dynamic.

I invite you to join in the effort to create better health for all people. 

Azita Emami, Ph.D., M.S.N., B.S.N., R.N.T., RN, FAAN
Dean, Yale School of Nursing
Linda Koch Lorimer Professor of Nursing