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Giving Caregivers the Tools for Success

Through education and training, Johnson & Johnson has advanced healthcare for more than a century. Comprehensive manuals explaining antiseptic techniques for sterile surgery and first aid, as well as professional journals sharing breakthroughs were among the company’s first publications. In the years since, corporate support for professional medical training and higher education has become a natural extension of this mission. Above all, the company seeks to empower healthcare workers to improve global public health.  

Johnson & Johnson’s early sterile surgical products and how-to manuals helped reshaped Americans’ perceptions of physicians and hospitals. Although today, we view hospitals as places of healing and recovery, in the late 19th century, they had the reputation of being unhygienic places that fostered the spread of disease and infection. Because modern surgery was in its earliest stages, for some procedures, survival rates neared zero. Johnson & Johnson’s sterile surgical products prevented infection and bolstered survival rates, while its guides like Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment taught doctors how to perform safe procedures according to Dr. Joseph Lister’s sterile methods. Within months of its 1888 publication, Modern Methods had been distributed to 85,000 physicians and pharmacists across the country. In subsequent decades, it became a leading guide on sterile operative methods

Modern Methods was translated into three languages and 4.5 million copies were circulated worldwide.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

To improved medical training, education, and care, Johnson & Johnson began giving to local New Jersey hospitals in the early 1900s. Scientific Director Frederick Kilmer helped found St. Peter’s Hospital (in New Brunswick), and future president Robert Wood Johnson II began supporting Middlesex Hospital in 1918. During the era, hospitals struggled to keep pace with the area’s growing population. Factory jobs brought thousands to New Jersey, but these jobs often put workers in dangerous environments with unsafe conditions and machinery—injuries were common. With Johnson & Johnson’s support, the hospitals expanded to meet the growing need. They also could afford to invest in the latest technology and intensive training courses for their staff. In honor of Robert Wood Johnson’s contributions over the decades, Middlesex Hospital was renamed Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in his honor in 1986.

St. Peter’s Hospital had a rigorous nursing program. In this early photograph, nurses stand on the hospital’s porch.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

As Johnson & Johnson grew, so did its contributions to medical education. Starting in 1924, the company lent its support to established pharmaceutical training schools, such as the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. Among its graduates was Robert McNeil, who later founded McNeil Laboratories, the creator of TYLENOL®. His company was later acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 1959. In the 1950s, Johnson & Johnson also inaugurated an annual Nursing Scholarship. Awarded to local New Brunswick high school students, the prize helped them pursue nursing degrees. The company continues to support the profession of nursing today through The Campaign for Nursing’s Future. Through its giving, the company fostered generations of medical workers, who used their education and training to improve health and wellness in their communities.

In the early 1900s, automobiles were the cutting-edge of technology. Hospitals that could afford it updated their ambulances from horse-drawn carts to cars, speeding up the transport of patients. Among them was Middlesex Hospital.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

By the late 20th century, Johnson & Johnson began collaborating with international health organizations to reach regions in need around the world. In the 1980s, Johnson & Johnson began its longstanding partnership with Operation Smile to fund corrective surgeries for children suffering from cleft lips, cleft palates, and other facial abnormalities. Beyond donating surgical products, Johnson & Johnson has funded thousands of life-altering surgeries. Today, Operation Smile has performed 220,000 procedures across 80 countries.

A young patient before his facial surgery.

Image courtesy: Peter Stuckings, Operation Smile

Johnson & Johnson continues its mission of training healthcare workers in the 21st century. In China, the company has partnered with the Chinese Ministry of Health and the American Academy of Pediatrics to address birth asphyxia. Their joint initiative called China’s Neonatal Resuscitation Program prevents neonatal mortality and illness through education. The initiative’s goal is to have a trained birth attendant on hand at every delivery to resuscitate infants, if needed. Since the program’s 2004 launch, it has drastically reduced newborn death by birth asphyxia by more than 70 percent across China. Johnson & Johnson is also partnering with Save the Children to bring this lifesaving training to birth attendants in Malawi and Uganda.

A new mother with her baby and a trained attendant.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

In donating sterile products, publishing educational manuals, and supporting medical training and education, Johnson & Johnson has empowered generations of healthcare workers, giving them the tools for success. More than a century later, the company continues its mission on a global scale to improve the lives and health of people in communities around the world.

 

 

Published April 25, 2017

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