While health care often focuses on acute or chronic illness, the elements necessary for good health are far more complex than we tend to recognize. Florence Nightingale understood this complexity and wrote extensively on the myriad social and environmental factors that influence well-being. Today these factors are termed “health determinants” and undergird the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article explores how nurses can contextualize the SDGs within their daily practice and create holistic plans of care for patients, families, communities, and nations.

Holistic nursing is founded on the values of integrality and the awareness of whole-people and whole-system interconnectedness. These concepts are foundational to the broader global health agendas and initiatives of our time, which seek to improve human, animal, and planetary health. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development represents the most remarkable transnational initiative in history: a 15-year plan (2015-2030) rallying the efforts of all countries, governments, and concerned citizens worldwide to foster human–planet thriving and survival. The purpose herein is to substantiate the United Nations 2030 Agenda as a holistic nursing priority and theory-practice opportunity for current and future professional maturation. This article provides a background of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a discussion regarding their relevance to holistic nursing, and an explanation of the essential nature of partnerships in attaining each of these “Global Goals.” We link the discussion of the SDGs directly to the American Holistic Nurses Association’s Core Values and identify implications for practice, education, research, and policy. Holistic nursing is ideally situated throughout the health care system and in the broader global context to advocate and advance the SDGs.

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Today's global health problems may seem insurmountable. Antibiotic-resistant microbes are increasing, and more economic, environmental, and social factors are affecting health. Health care costs keep rising. Hot politics and the chronic global nursing shortages all threaten the future of health care delivery. Also, diseases in many war-torn regions clearly place all humanity's health at risk. How can nurses possibly address these larger "global" challenges? To consider this question--and what nurses might do to contribute solutions--this article looks at the wider horizon of health care problems and how Florence Nightingale faced similar bigger health issues in her time. The health problems of today require renewed vision and the participation of committed citizens who take an active role in the promotion of human health-both locally and globally. By learning more about Nightingale's legacy, nurses actually attain a significant breadth and depth of knowledge and skill to share in these endeavors. Based on a review of Nightingale's responses and insights, seven recommendations are shared for consideration. While continuing the practices we have established, nurses can also create new, innovative, and relevant practice arenas, becoming--like she did in her time--global change agents for the sake of human health. From her broader viewpoint, Nightingale passed her global vision to us in order to extend our own horizons of possibility: remembering who we are, considering what we can do, who we care for, and why.

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), the famous “lady with the lamp,” is indeed the world's most well-known nurse. In our times, now for nearly six decades, the same environmental and social issues that were of concern to Nightingale are understood as key factors in achieving global development and global health. In Nightingale's footsteps, Nurse Coach leaders and all nurses are 21st century Nightingales who are coaching, informing, and educating for healthy people to be living on a healthy planet.

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This chapter explores Florence Nightingale’s (1820–1910) legacy as global nursing, global healthcare, and global citizenship. Integrative nursing recognizes health as an ever-changing pattern of creative, adaptive relationships—across all dimensions of human experience and planetary health. Our integrative nursing lens acknowledges holistic and integral philosophies and principles of the fundamental unity within and between all beings and their environments. Today, integrative nurses are 21st-century Nightingales who carry forth her vision to achieve a healthier world together. Their deep personal and professional integrative nursing mission can continually transform their own lives, thus allowing all nurses to become effective advocates and catalysts for human health. They are change agents for global transformation across our lifetimes and to the generations who follow us.

Florence Nightingale lived and worked in response to her times--yet also ahead of her time. She insisted on pursuing a career even though her wealthy family could have provided her with a lifetime of leisure. Because she was a woman, this choice to work outside her home was all the more unusual. Nightingale was also a vanguard woman because she chose nursing, a role that was considered the work of desperate, impoverished women who lived on the street like prostitutes. In addition to these unusual choices, Nightingale's career was unique beyond anyone in her time. She was one of the most prolific authors of the 19th century. In addition to being an early role model for nursing, Nightingale was also a leader in several other fields emerging in her time, including social work, statistical analysis, and print journalism. As a global thinker, Nightingale would have loved 21st century. She noted cultural, social, and economic concerns, particularly in relation to health and to the discipline of nursing. She urged nurses to progress in their practice and to think outside their official domains. She responded to the culture of the 19th century by envisioning what could be changed. Working with her talents and available resources, she evolved the health care culture of the 20th century and beyond. She called all of this work "Health-Nursing." As we remember and further study the extraordinary panorama that is our Nightingale legacy, we are creating and shaping our relevant, emerging 21st century nursing practice.