Barbara Stilwell is a nurse, health visitor and Primary Care Family Nurse Practitioner with a decades long interest in public health and in supporting health worker performance through a range of education and practice initiatives.
Barbara has worked for the WHO and for non-profit organizations as a technical specialist in workforce development and education, has lived in Switzerland, the USA, as well as countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. Barbara returned to the UK in 2018 to lead the global advocacy campaign, Nursing Now from 2018, through the challenges of the pandemic, until it ended in 2021. She is now working as a consultant on a global research and implementation project on nurse leadership and has edited a book on global health, Global Health and Nursing: a new narrative for the 21st century, published in 2025.
In the UK, Barbara Stilwell is best known for introducing the nurse practitioner programme and role. She is a Fellow of the RCN and of the American Academy of Nursing.
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