In the mid-2010s, Linn County, Iowa began welcoming large numbers of refugee families from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Linn County Public Health was their first introduction to the U.S. health care system. Providing care for these families had an impact on Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) Andrea Achenbach (08MNHC, 11MSN, 16DNP), and spurred her interest in global health.

“I thought it was an honor to be able to engage with those families,” she says, “and I think it was being a nurse that was important to understanding [their circumstances] and giving them care.” 

Currently a clinical assistant professor at the UI College of Nursing, Achenbach has been a primary care FNP for 13 years. She is a veteran of the United States Air Force and worked as an FNP at Peterson Air Force Base before joining the college faculty. She teaches in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program and provides care for immigrant, asylum seeking, and refugee patients at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) through faculty practice. 

In 2017, Achenbach had the opportunity to lead the college’s involvement in Hawkeyes for Haiti, a collaboration with the Code Family Foundation and Tippie College of Business in the community of Jeremie, Haiti. The program initially focused on creating a self-sustaining clinic that would provide primary care to children living at the Lundi Orphanage and the surrounding community in Jeremie.

“We traveled there several times, and then the political turmoil and safety became a problem,” says Achenbach. She has maintained the close relationships she developed in Haiti and continues to send supplies. 

“My office sometimes becomes a makeshift supply closet,” she adds with a laugh. “We just sent an EKG machine, a couple ophthalmoscopes, and a bunch of medication” to the community primary care clinic. 

Partnership is one of the program aspects Achenbach values most. “We take our cues from what their needs are and help support in any way we can,” she says. “I think an important part of the international work we do at the college is that we are collaboratively working with these communities and understanding their needs and trying to meet where we can with our expertise.”

When the idea of expanding the college’s Eswatini program arose, Achenbach was an obvious choice to help lead the initiative. She traveled to the country in fall 2023 and has built connections with colleagues in the family nurse practitioner program at the University of Eswatini. Excited about the partnership that is developing, she will return to Eswatini this fall.

As she thinks about the development of future nurses, Achenbach emphasizes the importance of engagement outside their own communities, be it local or international. 

“I do think it’s important to engage with communities that are different from where they grew up because it's a richness of growth; it's an understanding of another human being; it promotes that empathy and that understanding of the whole person that really, as a nurse, you need to hone so you can grow,” she says. 

When Achenbach works at the FQHC, she often has a student with her. The students have “the opportunity to work with the refugee, asylee, and immigrant populations, and just hearing their stories and understanding how we as nurse practitioners then support their health is really, really important,” she says. “We need to be able to meet the needs of everybody that we come in contact with.”

► Read more from the 2024 Iowa Nursing Magazine