History of Community Nursing Matrix As long as people have existed, they needed to look after their health. As a result, the healthcare industry was born. Nurses were a vital part of that growing community. This paper will approach three different historical periods in the United States, discuss the nurse’s role in the community in regards to the major health issues of that period, how they partnered with the community to create new programs and finish with an intellectual discussion on how Jean Watson’s theory of Caring can be applied to the nurse’s role for each historical period. Period 1-- 1800s: In the early year of American settlement , female head of the family provided the care for sick in the family (Stanhope, Lancaster, 2008). In the early 1800s increased number of urban residents have changed the traditional caring system (Stanhope, Lancaster, 2008). After the American Revolution, increased urbanization and beginning industrialization contributed to epidemical diseases (Stanhope, Lancaster, 2008). In 1800, the first Marine Hospital was opened in Norfolk, Virginia (). In early 1800s, nursing care mainly focused on moral issues than illness intervention (Stanhope, Lancaster, 2008). “The public was interested in limiting disease among all classes of people for religious reasons as a form of charity” (Stanhope, Lancaster, 2008, p. 27). The Ladies’s Benevolent Society of Charleston, South Carolina for the sick and poor provided charitable assistance in the beginning of 1813 (Stanhope, Lancaster, 2008). In Philadelphia, lay nurses had brief training program and after that they cared for postpartum women and newborn babies at their homes (Stanhope, Lancaster, 2008). In 1854, the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity began a visiting nurses service in Cincinnati, Ohio (Stanhope, Lancaster, 2008). In the middle of the nineteenth century,