American Association of Nurse Practitioners® (AANP) Announces 2021 International Advanced Practice Nurse Ambassadors
AUSTIN, TEXAS – The American Association of Nurse Practitioners® (AANP) International Committee has selected three health care professionals as 2021 ambassadors for the AANP International Advanced Practice Nurse Ambassador Program. Ambassadors are honored throughout the year and serve as AANP emissaries for life.
The 2021 honorees were chosen for their qualifications as health care providers and because they practice in countries where the nurse practitioner (NP) or the advanced practice nurse role is emerging. International ambassadors receive a scholarship to cover the cost of travel and accommodations to attend an AANP national conference, and their registration fee is waived. The AANP International Committee is hopeful the experience and insights gained by attending an AANP conference devoted to clinical education, policy and networking will stimulate ideas that could then be used in the ambassadors’ own countries. The ambassadors will be mentored by AANP International Committee members to help them gain new perspectives on providing NP care. The lasting connections between ambassadors and their program mentors help to build a network of ongoing work and communication. To facilitate a more widespread understanding of AANP and the NP role, the AANP International Committee also has produced French, Portuguese and Spanish versions of the AANP brochure, Your Partner in Health — The Nurse Practitioner.
Now entering its fifth year, the AANP International Ambassador Program was established primarily based on the recognized need by the AANP International Committee to encourage the development of NP and advanced practice nurse programs in other countries. Knowing there were NPs and NP advocates working on the role outside the U.S., the AANP International Committee believed initiating this unique program would lead to mutual learning. Since the program’s inception in 2018, 13 health care professionals have been bestowed the honor to serve as AANP International Ambassadors.
Congratulations to the 2021 AANP International Advanced Practice Nurse Ambassadors
Joseph Kilasara Trinitas, MSN-FNP, RN (Tanzania)
Joseph will be mentored by Josie Weiss, PhD, FNP-BC, FAANP
Joseph Kilasara, the only family nurse practitioner (FNP) in Tanzania, Africa, is a pioneer working to bring the FNP role to his country. He has witnessed first-hand the burden of illness on patients and families, which drives him to attain further skills and knowledge to help the marginalized, especially in rural communities. To promote the advanced practice nursing role in Tanzania, Mr. Kilasara was one of the few nurses chosen for graduate studies and completed his Master’s degree at the University of Botswana. He is an educator at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College in Tanzania where he participated extensively in developing the family nurse practitioner program, including the curriculum. He continues as the coordinator at his university and is preparing to seek his PhD to move this initiative forward. In addition to teaching, he practices in the FNP role at a primary healthcare center and is an active member of the Tanzania Nurses Association and the ICN NP/APN Network Student Subgroup.
Rachel Kimani, RN, FNP, CHNP, DNP (Kenya)
Rachel will be mentored by Jamesetta (Jamie) A. Newland, PhD, FNP-BC, FAANP, DPNAP, FAAN
Dr. Rachel Kimani is a lecturer at The Aga Khan University, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Nairobi, Kenya where she is part of a collaborative group that developed and presented to government stakeholders an advanced practice nursing (APN) and midwifery curriculum for Kenya and Tanzania. She now teaches in the inaugural Masters of Science courses in APN pathophysiology, health assessment, and research. Dr. Kimani is credentialed as a community health and primary care (family) nurse practitioner (NP), having earned MSN and Doctor of Nursing Practice degrees from Binghamton University in New York. While in the US, she worked as an NP in Clinical Research at The Rockefeller University in New York from 2015-2018. In 2020 she was honored as a Commonwealth Professional Fellow at Liverpool John Moore University in Liverpool, England. Dr. Kimani is an active member of the National Nurses Association of Kenya and volunteers at the Kamae Girls Institute at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison in Nairobi where she mentors incarcerated teenage girls for life skills. She has numerous publications to her credit. The collaborative group continues its advocacy work for the NP/APN role, scope of practice regulations, and certification in East Africa.
Sriyani Padmalatha, RN, NP (Sri Lanka)
Sriyani will be mentored by Katherine Pereira, DNP, RN, FNP-BC, ADM-BC, FAANP
Sriyani Padmalatha currently is working on her PhD from the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, expected completion fall 2021. She worked as a senior registered nurse for more than 20 years in Sri Lanka, before serving as a Nurse Practitioner in Cardiothoracic Surgery at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka. For the Ministry of Health she developed a program of training for Public Health Nursing Officers in 2017, now well established with huge community involvement during the COVID 19 pandemic and which Sriyani hopes will evolve into family nurse practitioners in the future under her leadership. Also, in 2017, she was the first scholarship recipient from Sri Lanka to participate in the International Council of Nurses (ICN) Global Nursing Leadership Institute. In 2018, under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, she served as a member of the Organizing Committee of the Regional Conference on Leading Healthcare in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Southeast Asia Region. Since 2019 she has been the Chair of the Sri Lankan Nurse Practitioner Association. Sriyani has published extensively, served as abstract reviewer for the ICN, and been a member of the both the International Society for Telemedicine/eHealth and the ICN NP/APN Network Student Subgroup.