Healing in crisis

Not long into Anna Freeman’s career as a nurse, she felt an urge to go abroad too loud to ignore.

“At the time I was still quite young, so I didn’t really know what that could mean,” says Freeman. “I knew it would mean working in places where people had less access to health care, where there were more infectious diseases and where other factors — like poverty or underdevelopment — contributed to poor health outcomes.”

Her first assignment with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Freeman witnessed the direct impacts of major conflict that impacted health, like injury caused by fighting. She also became aware of the indirect consequences as well, what she described as having a “ripple effect on people’s health.”

“Living in a war zone meant that children don’t get vaccinated. It meant that women cannot receive prenatal care,” says Freeman. “It meant that food insecurity is something that people live with, and children became malnourished. These are issues that are not directly the result of fighting, however they are absolutely the indirect consequences of fighting.”

Freeman also worked for MSF in the Central African Republic during and after a coup d’etat followed by a civil war. Fighting destroyed the local hospital, forcing providers to “essentially lay the railroad track in front of them” as they served patients. Freeman saw lines of women with infants, some only days or weeks old, who had delivered their babies in hiding when it was not safe to go to a hospital.

The people Freeman had met, worked alongside and cared for were top of mind when she considered her next step — a doctoral degree in nurse-midwifery, a decision made with the vulnerability of women during humanitarian crises in mind.

“I had a lot of skills to manage programs that delivered care for women and other people in crisis,” says Freeman. “But I didn’t have a clinical skillset where I could be a hands-on provider. I wanted to reconnect with patients in a way that I wasn’t able to. I knew that by becoming a midwife, I would then be able to directly care for women and have a direct influence on health care at both an individual and systems or policy level.” 

The University of Minnesota School of Nursing is a strong match for Freeman’s interests. The School of Nursing hosts several DNP specialties, which allows students to “benefit from the exchange with peers who are learning different types of advanced nursing,” says Freeman. 

The nurse-midwifery program in particular helped Freeman see the potential opportunities for both clinical care and broader advocacy for women’s health. 

“We have access to excellent clinical care in action, because there is a strong midwifery culture in Minnesota and the Twin Cities. Our clinical training is exceptional, and the patient care we are exposed to as students is really strong,” says Freeman. “Our professors also have a good sense of the role of a midwife as a provider but also as a contributor to the health of women more broadly.”

Freeman has taken advantage of the many opportunities both in the School of Nursing and across campus. She is completing a graduate minor in bioethics through the Center for Bioethics, an opportunity to engage with other graduate students across the University. Freeman credits the Bentson Scholarship as part of the reason she’s able to engage so fully in her doctoral studies.
“It does open the door for me to be able to do this program and get the most benefit from it,” says Freeman.

In 2024, Freeman participated in the American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s Student Policy Summit and traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate in nursing advocacy. The conference allowed Freeman to reflect on her experiences in health care in the United States versus those in other countries.

“We are very fortunate in the U.S., and it’s the result of hard work from people who are making sure that our institutions are safeguarded and who are advocating for the profession and education of nursing,” says Freeman. “Anybody can participate in that and can be in a role in safeguarding these institutions that are so important to us.”

After graduation, Freeman hopes to engage the program management and quality improvement experience that she developed in MSF alongside her nurse-midwifery clinical skills.

“I hope to become a midwife and to be able to provide care for women and pregnant people, but also be able to work on some of the systems issues that influence health care for people who are having babies,” says Freeman. “Ideally, I would do a little of both every day.”