Columbia Nursing Spring 2023

TWO GRADUATES BRING TREATMENT AND TRAINING TO WAR-TORN UKRAINE

COLUMBIA NURSING RANKS #1 IN THE U.S. IN FUNDING FROM NIH

Bringing the best care, to those most in need

Of the many variables that influence health and wellness, mental health is key. And Americans’ mental health has suffered greatly over the past three years.

The incidence of anxiety and depression has doubled among Americans since the onset of COVID-19 —now affecting one in five U.S. adults, compared to one in 10 before the pandemic. Substance misuse and overdose deaths are also up, as are gun violence and suicide. The need for mental health care is at an all-time high.

And as so often happens in health crises, people of color, including Indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community are disproportionately the victims of poor health outcomes. This is the unfortunate experience of most who live on society’s margins, including low-income, homeless, or disabled youth; youth in rural areas or immigrant households; or those caught up in the juvenile justice system.

Yet these are not the only barriers to mental health care. A lack of qualified clinicians also prevents people from getting the care they need. Columbia Nursing is meeting this need through our psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) program. Once our smallest specialty, the program is now our second largest, drawing upwards of 100 applicants for its 35 spots each year.

By preparing more PMHNPs to work in primary care settings, community-based organizations, and schools, we are increasing access to mental health care as well as primary health care. This effort—the focus of the feature starting on page 8—will allow those most in need to receive comprehensive care for psychological and other conditions.

Increasing access to care entails meeting patients where they are, as two of our alumni—an acute care neurosurgery NP and an emergency medicine NP—have done in war-ravaged Ukraine. Both have been volunteering in sorely understaffed, underequipped settings, treating victims of Russia’s deadly bombardment and helping to train Ukrainian doctors and nurses. You can learn more about their work in the feature starting on page 14.

And bringing skilled, compassionate, evidence-based care to patients in need—wherever they are—involves constantly advancing that care, too. In other words, our mission encompasses not just education, but research as well.

In January 2023, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that Columbia Nursing received more NIH research funding in FY22

than any other nursing school in the country, with 36 grants totaling $18.7 million. This #1 ranking reflects our ambitious research agenda, which is dedicated to improving health outcomes in all populations. The studies funded by the NIH are dedicated to controlling asthma in middle-school students, minimizing infections in nursing home residents, eliminating racial disparities in dementia care, using informatics to improve obstetrics care in Africa, and more.

Our commitment to research—the subject of this issue’s third feature, starting on page 18—is at the heart of our investment in the nursing workforce and the entire profession of nursing. Since the late 1980s, we have promoted nursing leadership in research by requiring all Columbia Nursing faculty to engage in scholarly investigation and by introducing a part-time doctor of nursing science program, which became a full-time PhD program in 2008. Today, our doctoral program is among the top 10 percent of recipients of federal training grants for pre- and postdoctoral scholars. Members of our faculty have more than 70 active research grants (including non-NIH funded projects) and publish dozens of studies in peer-reviewed journals each year. Our robust research enterprise now draws top nurse-scientists to Columbia, and some arrive here already holding active NIH grants.

While there is clearly much to celebrate at Columbia Nursing, I must conclude on a bittersweet note. One of our most esteemed members of our leadership team is retiring: Vivian Taylor, EdD, associate dean for diversity and cultural affairs. Vivian, our first dean of diversity, came here from Barnard in 2013; she has been a driving force in helping us develop a more inclusive and diverse culture and navigate this era of social and racial upheaval.

She embodies the best of Columbia and of nursing. Her legacy will inspire us to continue advocating for social justice and health equity in everything we do.

LORRAINE FRAZIER, PhD, RN, FAAN Dean, Columbia University School of Nursing Mary O’Neil Mundinger Professor of Nursing Senior Vice President, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Columbia Nursing

Lorraine Frazier, PhD, RN, FAAN

Dean, Columbia University School of Nursing

Mary O’Neil Mundinger Professor of Nursing

Senior Vice President, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

ALUMNI NEWS EDITORS:

Janice Rafferty Grady

Associate Dean, Development and Alumni Relations

Janine Handfus

Associate Director, Annual Fund

Sharon Sobel

Assistant Director, Alumni Relations

Linda Muskat Rim, Editor-in-Chief Senior Associate Dean, Strategic Communications and Marketing

DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION:

Eson Chan

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

Anne Harding

Andrea Kott, MPH

Kenneth Miller

Targets Social

BOARD OF ADVISORS:

Brenda Barrowclough Brodie, BS ’65 Durham, NC

Felesia Bowen, PhD ’10 Professor and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, AL

Paul Coyne, DNP ’16, MBA President and Co-Founder, Inspiren; Senior Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive, Hospital for Special Surgery New York, NY

Delphine Mendez de Leon, BS ’78, MBA, MPH Chief Strategy Officer, University Hospital of Brooklyn New York, NY

Angela Clarke Duff, BS ’70 Forest Hills, NY

Marjorie Harrison Fleming, BS ’69 Chair

Seabrook Island, SC

Susan Fox, BS ’84, MBA President and CEO, White Plains Hospital White Plains, NY

Susan Furlaud, MS ’12 Vero Beach, FL

Karen Hein, MD Jacksonville, VT

Mary Turner Henderson, BS ’64 San Francisco, CA

Wilhelmina Manzano, MA Group Senior Vice President; Chief Nursing Executive; Chief Operating Officer; Perioperative Services, New York-Presbyterian New York, NY

Janet Ready, BS ’81, MBA, MPH CEO, Community Health Centers of Lane County; Assistant Director, Health and Human Services of Lane County Syracuse, NY

Patricia Riley, BS ’76, MPH Captain (Retired), United States Public Health Service Atlanta, GA

Susan Salka, MBA Retired President and CEO, AMN Healthcare; Independent Director, McKesson Dallas, TX

Sara Shipley Stone, BS ’69 Brooksville, ME

Edwidge J. Thomas, DNP ’05

Vice President of Clinical Solutions for Northwell Holdings & Ventures New York, NY

Jasmine L. Travers, PhD ’16

Assistant Professor, New York University

Rory Meyers College of Nursing New York, NY

8

Weaving a Safety Net

By Anne Harding

18 Peak Performance

By Kenneth Miller

How Columbia Nursing reached first place in NIH funding—and why it matters.

14

Critical Care

By Andrea Kott, MPH

Two graduates of Columbia Nursing felt called to volunteer their skills helping grievously wounded soldiers and civilians in Ukraine.

Roundup

Research Links Asthma in Rural Teens to Risk of Being Bullied

Rural teens with asthma are more likely than those without the respiratory condition to be bullied, according to new research from Columbia Nursing. Having persistent asthma symptoms further increases teens’ risk of being bullied. The findings underscore the need for schools to promote acceptance of all students and for health care providers to offer proper asthma management education to their teenage patients, reported senior author Jean-Marie Bruzzese, PhD, and her colleagues in the January online issue of the Journal of Asthma. “Rural students with asthma, with or without diagnosis, could benefit from school-based interventions that reduce victimization based on this medical condition,” the researchers wrote.

Asthma narrows the airways, making breathing difficult and triggering repeated episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness, and coughing. It affects about 5.1 million children younger than 18 years old and disproportionately impacts Black children, who are nearly three times as likely as white children to have the condition.

Bullying is also prevalent among children in the United States; one in five report being bullied in school.

To fill gaps in the literature regarding the relationship between asthma and bullying among rural U.S. adolescents, Bruzzese and her colleagues surveyed 1,905 rural high school students between age 12 and 19; the participants’ mean age was 15.7 years. “We targeted rural kids because they’re ignored in asthma research,” says Bruzzese, a professor of applied developmental psychology.

About half of the students in the study sample were female, half selfidentified as Black/African American, and 15 percent had been diagnosed with asthma in the preceding year. More than half had no formal asthma diagnosis but had experienced asthma-like symptoms in the preceding year, while one-third did not have asthma or symptoms of the condition. Among those with current asthma, 59 percent had persistent symptoms. Being a victim of bullying in the preceding 12 months was common across all the adolescents. About one-quarter reported having been bullied for reasons that included weight or other health problems, race, or ethnicity. Those with current asthma were more likely than those with no asthma to report having been bullied. Those with possible undiagnosed asthma had 2.42 times the likelihood of being bullied as those with no asthma. “Having a diagnosis is not the driving factor of bullying,” Bruzzese says. “It’s experiencing symptoms in front of peers that is problematic.”

Anything that differentiates teenagers from their peers—whether race or ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, weight, or other physical characteristics—increases their risk of being bullied, points out co-author April Ancheta, PhD ’22. “Teens with asthma have to take time away from their friends to control their symptoms,” Ancheta says. “Going to the nurse to use their inhaler or not being able to attend gym or participate in sports draws attention to their difference.”

Adolescents with persistent asthma symptoms—those that occur at least three times a week—had even higher odds of bullying victimization than those with intermittent asthma, Ancheta says. Adds Bruzzese, “Kids who have persistent symptoms have a greater chance of their peers observing them and thinking that they’re weak.”

Black adolescents and Hispanic adolescents, compared to White adolescents, were significantly less likely to report having been bullied, however. “Black adolescents and Hispanic adolescents were not the minority at their school, which was actually a protective factor,” Bruzzese notes.

Experiencing bullying damages adolescents’ self-esteem and other aspects of their psychosocial development. It is linked to wide-ranging psychological and social health effects, including depression and anxiety, social isolation, sleep disturbance, psychosomatic symptoms, and poor school performance and attendance. “Bullying is problematic, not only at the time it’s happening but [with] ramifications in adulthood,” Ancheta says.

It is important to empower teens to manage their asthma symptoms by taking their medication regularly and avoiding environmental triggers like dust or pollen, she explains. “Taking responsibility for their asthma symptoms, especially as they transition from adolescence to adulthood, can help not only to reduce their risk for bullying victimization but also promote self-acceptance,” says Ancheta.

Meanwhile, teachers and school administrators and nurses should be aware of the increased risk of being bullied for adolescents with asthma or other chronic medical conditions, and thus the need to create inclusive environments that are accepting of all students’ abilities and conditions. “Teachers and administrators should teach kids that people sometimes pick on others because they are different, including those who have asthma,” Bruzzese says. “If kids start to understand what asthma is, then they may be less inclined to see their peers as being weak and there may be less bullying.”

New Grants Support Groundbreaking Studies of Post-Discharge and Ambulatory Cardiac Care

Ruth Masterson Creber, PhD, a professor at Columbia Nursing, recently received two major grants for studies of post-discharge and ambulatory care in cardiac patients—one from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the other from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

Her $2.6 million NIH grant is for an R01 study titled “Improve the Meaning of Patient-Reported Outcomes to Evaluate Effectiveness for Cardiac Care (IMPROVECardiac Care).” In its first phase, the fouryear project will seek to identify minimally important clinical differences (MCIDs) in patient-reported outcomes for people with advanced heart disease. Masterson Creber and her team will then investigate how that information can be translated back meaningfully to health care professionals to inform patient-centered clinical decision-making.

In recent years, there has been growing recognition in many areas of health care that patient-reported outcomes, or PROs, can be a valuable complement to standard diagnostic measures. “PROs provide a holistic picture of where patients are on the disease trajectory, both during routine management and during recovery from major clinical events,” Masterson Creber explains. “In cardiac care, however, research on PROs has two important gaps. The first is that MCIDs—defined as the smallest change in outcome that patients perceive as meaningful—have not been established for specific cohorts of patients. The second gap is a lack of guidance on how to incorporate MCIDs into clinical practice.”

IMPROVE-Cardiac Care will strive to fill in those blanks. The team will study approximately 800 participants in the United States and Great Britain, divided into three groups: patients who are recovering after a coronary artery bypass graft; patients with heart failure (HF) who are recovering after hospitalization; and HF patients with a preserved ejection fraction who are undergoing ambulatory management. The researchers will begin by examining the relationship between clinical

indicators and patients’ perceived degree of improvement. Using advanced mathematical modeling techniques, they’ll establish MCIDs for patients in each cohort.

Next, the team will look for effective ways to use PROs in health care settings. To do so, they’ll collect video data on 60 patientprovider dyads as they’re in the process of using validated PROs to guide shared decision-making. The researchers will employ video ethnography to evaluate patient-provider interactions, which will be analyzed by anthropologists or sociologists to measure verbal and nonverbal cues. The team will also interview providers to understand how PROs can be better integrated into the clinical workflow to improve the quality of care.

The project’s long-term goal is to leverage patients’ perspectives to improve outcomes. “Right now, many of our tools for assessing PROs in cardiac patients are too generic to guide individual-level decision-making,” says Masterson Creber. “It’s crucial to understand the MCIDs for specific conditions and demographic groups. We may find that there are significant differences between men and women, for example, or between older and younger patients. We just don’t know yet.”

Masterson Creber also received $4.2 million from PCORI, with co-principal investigator Brock Daniels, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine. This grant will go toward an ongoing study titled “Using Mobile Integrated Health and Telehealth to Support Transitions of Care among Patients with Heart Failure (MIGHTY-Heart).”

The project addresses a persistent problem among patients who’ve been hospitalized for heart failure: within a month of discharge, 25 percent are readmitted. The challenges of accessing follow-up care—especially for members of low-income and minority populations— are an important factor behind that statistic. “Patients face barriers when they are getting discharged from the hospital—from getting their medications, to follow-up appointments, to managing their own symptoms,” Masterson Creber observes. “This study facilitates access

to telehealth with an emergency medicine physician to help bridge the gap while patients wait to see their cardiologist. Without the support of the mobile integrated health team, many more patients would be back to the emergency room for things that are preventable.”

She and her colleagues are randomizing patients at 12 New York City hospitals to one of two types of follow-up care: a standard model, in which patients receive a phone call from a care transitions coordinator after their discharge, and a new approach called mobile integrated care. Under that protocol, patients get a follow-up phone call from a nurse, who coordinates continuing access to community paramedics. If a patient has a health concern, a paramedic can make a house call and do a real-time telehealth consult with an on-call emergency medicine doctor. After doing point-of-care testing and addressing the patient’s concerns, the paramedic can either leave the patient for home-based treatment or take the patient to the hospital.

The researchers are in the process of recruiting 2,100 patients and will follow them up for six months following their discharge. They will track whether patients are readmitted to the hospital and will also survey them at intervals about their symptoms, ability to function, quality of life, and other metrics.

“The idea is to bridge the hospital-tohome transition using facilitated telehealth. We are trying to meet patients’ needs in their home by bringing components of the emergency department to them and getting them connected with their cardiologist to try and avoid a quick bounce-back to the hospital,” Masterson Creber says.

JÖRG MEYER

Ruth Masterson Creber, PhD

Schnall Awarded $15.1 Million to Examine Women’s HIV Risk

Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, the Mary Dickey Lindsay Professor of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, with co-principal investigators Mirjam-Colette Kempf, PhD, at the University of Alabama and Amy Johnson, PhD, at Lurie Children’s Hospital, has received a $15,149,718 R01 award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the Office of the Director, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for a project titled “Examining Social Ecological and Network Factors to Assess Epidemio-

logical Risk in a Large National Cohort of Cisgender Women.”

The five-year study will enroll a national digital cohort of 1,800 HIV-negative women and look at how multiple factors influence their risk of acquiring HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. The award is Columbia Nursing’s largest research grant to date.

“Cisgender women account for approximately 20 percent of annual HIV diagnoses in the United States, yet there is limited information on the combination of factors that contribute to HIV incidence in these women,”

explains Schnall, who is also associate dean of faculty development at the school.

“In response, our study team proposes to develop a knowledge base of integrated data, including biomarker data, network data, and big data from disease surveillance and social determinants of health databases,” she adds. “At the conclusion of our study, we hope to identify the individual, social network, geospatial, and public policy factors that increase a woman’s risk for HIV and/or sexually transmitted infection acquisition, providing intervention opportunities to reduce women’s vulnerabilities to HIV infection.”

Bisexual Women Face Increased Risk of Heart Disease

Bisexual women were half as likely as their heterosexual peers to have high scores on a scale measuring cardiovascular health, shows new research from Columbia Nursing.

“Our findings support previous evidence of the heightened risk of heart disease among bisexual individuals and provide important insights to improve heart disease prevention for these individuals,” says Billy Caceres, PhD, an assistant professor at the school and lead author of the study. Titled “Differences in Ideal Cardiovascular Health Between Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Adults,” it was published online on February 22 in JAMA Cardiology

There is growing evidence that sexual minority (SM) adults have worse cardiovascular health than their heterosexual peers, Caceres and his colleagues note, likely in part due to stress they experience as members of a minoritized group. Health and behavioral factors contribute as well, they add. SM men and women are more likely to be current or past smokers, for example, while SM women are at higher risk of obesity, diabetes, and insufficient sleep.

To look at heart health comprehensively, Caceres and his colleagues used the cardiovascular health (CVH) scoring system established by the American Heart Association (AHA); it measures heart risks on a scale from 0 to 100, with a score of 100 indicating “ideal” heart health.

The score is based on the AHA’s recommendations for what they call “Life’s Essential Eight”—that is, the four health behaviors (diet, physical activity, smoking, and sleep) and four health factors (body mass index [BMI], cholesterol level, blood sugar level, and blood pressure) that are associated with heart disease and mortality.

Caceres and his colleagues analyzed data from 2007 through 2016 gathered by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

(NHANES) to calculate CVH scores combining all eight risk factors. The study was based on data from 12,180 adults aged 18 to 59; about half were female, and two-thirds were non-Hispanic white.

Bisexual women were more likely to be obese than heterosexual women, while bisexual men were at higher risk than heterosexual men of having hypertension and using blood pressure medication, the researchers found. Bisexual and lesbian women had higher scores for nicotine exposure than heterosexual women, while bisexual women had less favorable BMI scores and lower heart health scores than heterosexual women.

Overall, the researchers found, bisexual women are about half as likely to have a CVH score in the high range (80 to 100) than the low range (0 to 49) compared to heterosexual women. Bisexual women are also the sexual identity group most likely to live in poverty, making them more likely to delay seeking health care due to financial challenges and/or to have difficulty finding a health care provider.

However, the differences between gay or bisexual men and their heterosexual peers were more mixed, Caceres and his colleagues found, with gay men on balance exhibiting better CVH than heterosexual men.

“There is a need for tailored interventions to improve the CVH of SM individuals, particularly bisexual women,” the researchers concluded in the paper reporting their findings. “Investigators should conduct longitudinal research that examines social determinants that may explain the sexual identity differences observed in this study.”

Other study authors from Columbia Nursing, all affiliated with the school’s Center for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research, include PhD student Yashika Sharma MS ’20, research assistant Rohith Ravindranath, and research coordinator Danny Doan.

In the U.S. and Romania, a Researcher Targets Social Inequities to Combat HIV

Corina Lelutiu-Weinberger, PhD, an associate professor of health sciences research at Columbia Nursing, first became aware of the connections between social inequities and health disparities as a girl in Romania in the 1980s. Her father, a hematologist-oncologist, was on a team that treated one of the country’s first adult HIV/AIDS patients—a gay man who’d contracted the disease while traveling abroad. “My dad was devastated that they couldn’t help him,” she recalls. “He said, ‘This man is dying, and no one wants to touch him.’ The patient was highly stigmatized, not only because of the virus but also because of his sexual orientation.”

That was the first experience to inspire Lelutiu-Weinberger to build a global research career targeting stigma and discrimination mechanisms that lead to health inequities. That focus led to a string of National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded studies—some in the United States, where she has lived since 1994, and others in Eastern Europe—to improve behavioral, mental, and sexual health for sexual, gender, racial, and ethnic minorities.

One recent award, an R01 grant totaling $3.8 million over five years, supports a study titled “Ending the HIV Epidemic with Equity: An All-Facility Intervention to Reduce Structural Racism and Discrimination and its Impact on Patient and Healthcare Staff Wellbeing.” The project (co-led by Felicia Browne, ScD, of RTI International) will recruit six federally funded Ryan White HIV/AIDS Programs in the Southeastern U.S. to co-develop programs aimed at reducing structural racism and discrimination against patients and health care workers who are Black, Indigenous, or other people of color. Upon successful testing, the template for those programs will be an evidence-based intervention that can be adopted across diverse clinical settings for systematic targeting of structural racism and discrimination and increased health equity.

“The study region is a part of the country where rates of HIV are among the highest,

and where instances of racism are frequent,” Lelutiu-Weinberger explains. “We’ll be working with clinic staff to help them understand the intertwined structural factors driving both problems and to take systematic steps to avoid perpetuating them.” After conducting interactive workshops at each clinic, she and her colleagues will lead the staff in creating a manual reflective of the clinics’ commitment to anti-racism that can be implemented and sustained across time.

To gauge the efficacy of the intervention, the research team will conduct six-month trainings at each facility, led by clinic staff trained by the investigative team. “We’ve developed an index that measures how racial dynamics change over time, looking at the experiences of both patients and staff,” says Lelutiu-Weinberger. “We’ll also assess whether patients are healthier at the end of the intervention. Our hypothesis is that if the climate improves, they’ll be more engaged in their own health care due to increased trust in their providers, which could result in reduced HIV viral loads.”

Lelutiu-Weinberger’s other new award, from the NIH’s Fogarty International Center, is funding a study (co-led with John Pachankis, PhD, of Yale University) called “Preparing for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis

Implementation in Central-Eastern European Countries with Low Access to Biomedical Prevention.” The $982,000 R21/R33 grant is supporting a five-year trial in Romania of a program using in-person and mobile health to empower gay and bisexual men to adopt pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a regimen that is highly effective in preventing HIV acquisition after exposure but that is not yet officially available in Romania and other neighboring countries.

This effort grew out of earlier studies in which Lelutiu-Weinberger and her team used mobile apps in the U.S. and Romania to promote HIV and substance-use risk reduction for men who have sex with men. For the Romanian PrEP trial, which was launched

Corina Lelutiu-Weinberger, PhD

as a pilot study in 2020, the researchers adapted an app designed and tested in other countries by co-investigator Lisa HightowWeidman, MD, of the University of North Carolina to track patients’ use of PrEP medications and boost their adherence to the regimen. That’s especially important in a country like Romania, where PrEP is available only through quasi-legal sources (i.e., online foreign pharmacies), and where doctors are not yet trained to prescribe it.

Lelutiu-Weinberger and her colleagues persuaded infectious disease clinics in two Romanian cities to collaborate on the PrEP trial with about 140 participants. The researchers are comparing adherence rates among two arms of the study: participants who see a physician at one of the clinics, and participants who follow the same protocol but also receive counseling from psychologists the team has trained in sex-positive messaging and have access to the PrEP adherence support app. “The sex-positive approach is completely novel,” Lelutiu-Weinberger notes. “It’s unheard-of in Romania to embrace sexuality and not think men should be punished for desiring other men.”

If this trial is successful, she adds, “I see us expanding the program to other countries in the region that are in dire need of evidence-based PrEP counseling and adherence protocols, including Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and Moldova. We’ll have a model that we can roll across Central and Eastern Europe and, with further adaptation, to other regions of the world in need of critical biomedical HIV prevention.”

JÖRG MEYER

Weaving a

Net Safety

Columbia Nursing is strengthening the mental health care system in six ways.

By Anne Harding

Illustration by Emma Turner

TThree years into the pandemic, the threat of COVID-19 itself may be receding, but the nation’s mental health care system is being strained as never before.

Substance misuse, depression, overdose deaths, and gun violence are all on the rise. Thirty-seven percent of high school students reported poor mental health during the pandemic, and 44 percent said they felt sad or hopeless in the previous year, according to a 2021 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And that’s on top of the fact that, according a 2009-2019 CDC report, mental health problems and suicidal behaviors among youth had already been increasing before the onset of the pandemic.

Among the hardest hit by the pandemic’s mental health effects were youth from minoritized groups and those with disabilities. Young people from rural areas or low income or immigrant households, as well as those involved with the child welfare or juvenile justice systems, were also more severely affected.

COVID affected adults, too. The incidence of depression and anxiety in this country doubled in recent years; before the pandemic, one in 10 U.S. adults reported anxiety or depression, while now about one in five do. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that rates of depression and anxiety went up 25 percent.

In more hopeful news, the pandemic has also resulted in increased awareness regarding the central-

However, there are still far too few mental health clinicians to meet the growing need. And accessing mental health care is more difficult for historically marginalized groups, who also have worse mental health outcomes than whites. Just one-third of Black or Hispanic people with mental illness receive treatment, compared to 43 percent of white patients.

“A ONE-STOP SHOP”

Enter the psychiatric-mental health (PMH) nurse. Most PMH nurses are registered nurses (PMHRNs), with 109,000 certified in the U.S., according to a 2020-2021 workforce survey by the American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA). Some PMH nurses have training at the master’s or doctoral level; this cohort, known as advanced practice RNs (APRNs), grew from 13,000 in 2013 to 26,000 in 2020. (The APRN cohort includes PMH nurse practitioners [PMHNPs] and PMH certified nurse specialists, who have equivalent qualifications.)

Fortunately, “more people are interested in becoming psychiatric mental health NPs,” says Laura Kelly, PhD, who directs Columbia Nursing’s PMHNP program. “I think our visibility is increasing as more funding becomes available to mental health.”

Kelly notes that PMHNPs have been serving mental health patients in the community for decades. They are qualified to provide mental health care across the life span, to individuals and to families, although many choose to specialize in a particular population. PMHNPs’ scope of practice embraces delivering education; offering psychotherapy; diagnosing, treating, and managing chronic and acute illnesses; prescribing and managing psychiatric medications; making referrals; ordering diagnostic tests; and more.

ity of mental health to overall health and wellness. President Biden has made tackling the nation’s mental health crisis a priority, highlighting youth mental health, suicide among veterans, and the opioid crisis in his 2022 and 2023 State of the Union addresses. This heightened awareness has had several benefits, including reducing the stigma often associated with mental illness and encouraging more people to seek mental health care. Funding for such care has also begun to rise, especially for programs targeting children and adolescents. The White House recently announced that the Department of Education will distribute more than $280 million in new grants to support school-based mental health care.

“We really function as a one-stop shop,” says Beth Maletz, DNP, an assistant professor in Columbia Nursing’s PMHNP program. “It’s just really nice to be able to do all of that for our patients.”

Says MDE-DNP student Michelle Charles MS ’21, who came to nursing from social work: “Nursing is so special because both the psychosocial and the physiological are really evenly weighted in its foundation.”

Here are six ways that Columbia nurses are helping to build a stronger mental health safety net.

1. Educating more PMHNPs

Once Columbia Nursing’s smallest educational program, the PMHNP track is now its second-largest. Record numbers of applicants are aspiring to fill the program’s 35 spots, with upwards of 100 applicants in recent years, Kelly notes. “The more people we

There are still far too few mental health clinicians to meet the growing need. And accessing mental health care is more difficult for historically marginalized groups.

can educate into the workforce, the more patients will have access to mental health care,” she says.

Over half a million new PMH nurses would need to be hired to provide “merely adequate access” to mental health care in the U.S., according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMSHA). Nurse leaders and health policy experts agree that expanding the field, and extending full scope of practice to PMHNPs nationwide, will be essential to achieving the equitable delivery of mental health care.

One factor limiting this expansion is a shortage of practitioners in the field available to supervise students on their clinical rotations, says Latisha Hanson, DNP ’15, an assistant professor of nursing who teaches both MDE and DNP students. Building a robust pipeline from schools to the workforce, Hanson says, will require more nurses to consider becoming preceptors or clinical instructors.

“We really do feel like we are educating and training the next generation of psych NPs to go out into the world and fill this space that historically hasn’t been filled,” Maletz says. “We’re very focused on social justice, we’re very focused on health equity, and we’re training our students to look at everything through those lenses.”

2. Intervening early

Integrating mental health care with primary care and promoting positive parenting among families with young children at risk for developmental, emotional, or behavioral difficulties can help prevent or mitigate serious emotional or behavioral problems later on, says Maletz, who did her doctoral work in this area.

In January 2020, she launched the Maternal and Child Integrated Mental Health Program (MACIMP) at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, with four physicians, a psychologist, and a small grant. The program has “exploded,” she says. “We’ve gotten a lot of additional funding and resources around maternal and early childhood mental health.”

MAC-IMP now includes a team that ensures families’ needs are being met from a social determinants perspective, a doula program, and behavioral health specialists who work with women during their pregnancy and, after they give birth, with the mother and child until the child’s third birthday.

Maletz is currently developing a program to identify parents with risk factors or behavioral health needs before their child is born, so they can begin treatment during pregnancy. The goal of this program, and of MAC-IMP overall, is to prevent

intergenerational trauma and prepare expectant mothers for the experience of being a parent, she says. “We focus on attachment and bonding, we focus on breastfeeding, we focus on recovery after birth.” Later, the focus shifts to parenting, child development, toilet training, and the like.

The team works with all families the program serves but uses risk stratification to identify those most in need and ensure that they receive the most resources.

To date, Maletz says, her team has helped more than 1,000 families with its early childhood program alone, an evidence-based national model called HealthySteps.

“I have learned that regardless of what the mental health issue is, parents and caregivers are the best people to take care of their own children,” Maletz says. “And if we give them what they need, their children are going to be much better off.”

3. Advancing telehealth

Psychotherapy is highly effective (in some cases accompanied by medication) for treating depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and

Beth Maletz, DNP

PORTRAITS BY JÖRG MEYER

a host of other mental health issues. And the widespread adoption of telehealth during the pandemic has made psychotherapy far more accessible and convenient for many patients.

Maletz now relies almost entirely on telehealth to provide psychiatric care to children and adolescents and their families from a pediatric clinic serving Washington Heights and the Bronx. “Telehealth has definitely increased access enormously for my patient population,” she says. “The families prefer this. They love that they don’t have to schlep to the clinic, and kids don’t have to miss school and families don’t have to miss work.”

Teletherapy is especially suited to adolescents, she notes. “They do everything on their phone, so they just love it. They can click a button and see me, get what they need, and then go hang out with their friends.”

Working by phone also allows clinicians to see their patients in a more natural, comfortable setting than a typical clinic or doctor’s office, Maletz adds. “They’re much better able to talk about what’s going on for them, what they’ve been experiencing, what their symptoms are.”

A drawback of telemedicine, Hanson notes, is that group therapy—a great way to scale up access to mental health care—doesn’t work very well on Zoom. And even for one-on-one consultations, periodic in-person visits are still essential, she adds, such as for annual checkups.

Says Kelly: “It would be doing a disservice to our students if we didn’t provide them with a platform for tele-psychiatry, because they’re going to be doing it when they graduate. This is a modality in which the students have to become proficient. It will never go away.”

4. Meeting patients where they are

Increasingly, PMHNPs are working not in hospitals but within primary care settings, community-based organizations, and schools to provide more easily accessible mental health care to those most in need. Integrating mental health care with primary care, in a patient-centered medical home, “has enormously removed the stigma and increased access for patients who seek mental health care,” Maletz says.

She believes more and more mental health treatment will be provided in community settings. “And it really is psych-mental health NPs who are doing that work,” she adds.

This is exactly the kind of setting where Michelle Charles wants to work. “What I know for sure is I really love outpatient community health,” she says. In her current clinical placement, she is serving a mostly Medicare- or Medicaid-covered, lowincome population in the Bronx. “They might be navigating things that are even deeper, that you can’t just medicate,” she says. “I really like the idea of being able to partner with them to solve some of the complex problems that come up because of their environment.”

5. Using a trauma-informed perspective

In 2018, in recognition of the huge toll of trauma on health, SAMSHA’s Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) launched the Interagency Task Force for Trauma-Informed Care (TIC Task Force) to investigate best practices in care for children and youth and ways to improve the federal government’s response to families affected by trauma.

Laura Kelly, PhD

“A trauma-informed approach to care acknowledges that health care organizations and care teams need to have a complete picture of a patient’s life situation—past and present—in order to provide effective health care services with a healing orientation,” the TIC Task Force website states.

Columbia Nursing has a $1.9 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program to educate PMHNP students and occupational therapy students on interprofessional trauma-informed care. Students in the program are currently running trauma-informed mindfulness groups at a school in Brooklyn for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Latisha Hanson has found the trauma-informed approach useful in the nursing classroom as well. She conducts a check-in with her students before she does anything else, to see how they’re doing. Those with a history of trauma may need more space to prepare themselves to learn about the effects of trauma, she adds, but they can still learn. And by using the trauma-informed approach with students, Hanson notes, preceptors are also modeling it for them.

“I try to take what’s going on in society into the classroom,” adds Hanson. For example, she makes time for discussion of traumatic events in the news and uses those discussions as an opportunity to teach and practice simple grounding exercises. “We have to be able to get through our own feelings.

“The students are so motivated,” Hanson adds. “They see the value of trying to reduce some of the sequelae that result from trauma and untreated mental illness so they can help people to be the best selves they can be.”

6. Delivering psychotherapy

“The philosophy of our program is that psych NPs are therapists first, that’s what differentiates us,” says Kelly. “Most students who come here want to be therapists.”

This was a major draw for Alyssa Lee, who started her MDE-DNP in June 2020. “The role of therapy —learning different types, between family, individual, and group—is something that is given its space within the program,” she says. “Not all psych NP programs really understand or focus on the role that therapy has. And that was something that I felt really passionately about because I have seen therapy be so powerful.”

Her classmate Jordan Arbelaez MS ’21 also chose Columbia Nursing for its emphasis on psychotherapy. “I have been seeing psychotherapy clients

now for over a year, and I don’t plan to ever stop,” she says. “There is so much evidence supporting improved long-term outcomes with psychotherapy as opposed to medication alone.”

For example, in Arbelaez’s first-year scholarly writing course, she reviewed the medical literature on two long-term treatments for PTSD: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. “I was so amazed by the evidence supporting EMDR therapy as superior to SSRIs for long-term relief of PTSD,” says Arbelaez, “that I became certified as an EMDR therapist through EMDRIA,” a professional organization devoted to the therapy. “I think it’s important PMHNPs incorporate therapy into practice in order to best serve our patients.” 

health care.

PMHNPs are working not in hospitals but within primary care settings, community-based organizations, and schools to provide more easily accessible mental

Latisha Hanson, DNP ’15

IImagine working a 24-hour shift as the only nurse on a ward full of patients with traumatic brain or spinal cord injuries. Imagine needing to drill a pressure-relieving burr hole in the skull of a patient without any diagnostic imaging to guide you. Imagine practicing emergency medicine in a war zone.

Andrew Scanlon, DNP ’10, and Fred Barton, MS ’18, had never conceived of delivering care in such situations before traveling to war-torn Ukraine, where they treated patients and trained other providers. Neither nurse practitioner (NP) had ever practiced in a war zone. But now that they have done so, it has deepened their already-profound appreciation for the Columbia Nursing education that prepared them to practice emergency medicine without the advanced technology available in the U.S.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Scanlon and Barton felt driven to help. Both knew they had the necessary training to treat victims of Russia’s deadly bombardment of the country. Both wanted to give back.

Scanlon, an acute care neurosurgery NP, joined a World Health Organization (WHO) pilot program that trained multidisciplinary teams of clinicians to care for patients with traumatic spinal cord and brain injuries in a veterans’ rehabilitation hospital. Barton, an emergency medicine NP with extensive first-responder experience, also signed up with WHO, which assigned him to a surgical team in a frontline military field hospital’s operating room and intensive care unit.

“I wanted to do more than just say, ‘I support Ukraine,’” says Scanlon, a native of Australia who is currently a senior lecturer and NP at the University of Melbourne. “Having been an international student at Columbia Nursing, one of the top universities of the world, I felt I needed to pay it back through my clinical practice, academic work, scholarly output, and service.”

Barton—who spent the better part of a decade delivering emergency medical care as a 911 paramedic, SWAT medic, senior firefighter, and rescue diver—says, “When the war happened, I knew the Ukrainian people needed help. I felt like Ukraine was a place where I could do good.” Both went expecting and eager to give 100 percent of themselves. In the process, each learned a lot about ingenuity, fortitude, and survival.

Scanlon, who recently earned a second doctorate, in advanced nursing practice in low- and lower-middleincome countries, knew that the hospital where he would work was Ukraine’s only center for rehabilitating veterans with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. Although it was clean, and its nurses adhered to generally recognized principles of care, their training and the hospital’s staffing levels were minimal. The vast majority of its 24-hour-duty nurses cared for 25 to 30 patients at a time—mostly soldiers, mainly in their 20s—with help from nursing assistants. “I was shocked to see one nurse per ward,” Scanlon says, “but it’s all they had. You can appreciate that nurses were more reactive than proactive with care. Being one nurse for a whole ward, you can’t really plan.”

Like many other low- and low-middle income countries, Ukraine does not require nurses to be registered or licensed, Scanlon explains. “You get trained as a nurse and you can practice,” he says. Although bachelor’s degree programs

CRITICAL CARE

By Andrea Kott, MPH

Ilustration by Jenna Bordinger

Two graduates of Columbia Nursing felt called to volunteer their skills helping grievously wounded soldiers and civilians in Ukraine.

Andrew Scanlon, DNP ’10, at the rehabilitation hospital in Ukraine where he taught clinicians to care for veterans with traumatic spinal cord and brain injuries.

in nursing exist in Ukraine, there were only two nurses with such a degree at the hospital where he worked. What’s more, he says, the country has no NPs. “They definitely have a skill shortage.”

With the help of a translator, Scanlon taught a two-week course for the hospital’s 80 nurses. He covered general nursing skills, infection control, patient transfers, wound care, and issues specific to traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, including general neuroscience and bladder and bowel care.

The hospital lacked more than skilled staff. Also in short supply were basic medical supplies, like gauze swabs. “One of the things the nurses taught me was how to make gauze squares for dressings, which we take for granted in the U.S. and Australia,” Scanlon says. “I felt embarrassed comparing what we have to what they have. . . . In U.S. or Australian hospitals, we can just grab or order what we need. In Ukraine, they have to rely a lot on donations from international organizations, which aren’t guaranteed, so they have to make do with what they’ve got.”

For Barton, however, given his background in rural emergency medicine, making do was nothing new. “I’m used to providing care with few

resources,” he says. His fellowship training in rural emergency medicine and his years of first-responder experience had accustomed him to traveling with a personal supply kit outfitted for providing care in low-resource settings. It contains, among other things, water purification tablets; a flashlight; a giant needle to reinflate a collapsed lung; and a Butterfly IQ, a hand-held point of care ultrasound (or POCUS) machine. Barton uses the POCUS to quickly examine a patient’s heart, aorta, lungs, internal organs, and bladder; to determine the severity and extent of injuries; to insert IVs, central lines, and regional nerve blocks; and to rule out conditions like collapsed lungs. “If I can have one diagnostic tool, that’s what I want,” he says.

He relied heavily on his supply kit in the field hospital, which lacked diagnostic equipment as well as emergency medicine physicians. “In Ukraine, there are no emergency medicine doctors, no emergency rooms. Patients are simply assessed by a surgeon who decides whether they need surgery,” Barton says. “We had a Czech X-ray machine from 1986 and a monitor for blood pressure and pulse oximetry, neither of which were used during my time there, but no lab work or CT scanner—just a giant magnet that looked like a police baton that doctors waved over patients to see if shrapnel under their skin would pop up,” he says.

Shrapnel injuries are very common in Ukraine. “This isn’t a war of gunshots,” Barton says. “It’s a war of artillery, shrapnel, and blast injuries.” Bombs, rockets, shells, and land mines can cause significant chest trauma and collapsed lungs, as well as traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. “They’re not designed to kill people but to devastate limbs so a person can never fight again,” he adds. “It’s unbelievable how horrendous they are.” Barton and the other volunteers he served with— a former U.S. Special Forces trauma surgeon, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, and an Italian former special forces medic—used his POCUS to assess all the trauma they encountered. “We have a formula to go through trauma medicine in the U.S.,” Barton says. “We check airway, breathing, and circulation; do a primary POCUS survey for life-threatening injuries; and then do a secondary POCUS survey of everything else—systematically moving down from head to toe to rapidly stabilize patients. By the time you reach the toes, you’ve done everything and move on to the next patient.”

Yet when it came to intubating patients, placing chest tubes or central lines, and even drilling

a burr hole to relieve the pressure of a brain bleed, Barton often had to rely merely on his knowledge of anatomy and his physical assessment skills. “In Ukraine, when somebody was hurt, the message you got was ‘Fix them.’ You had to go off your gut and knowledge. It made me a lot more confident as a clinician,” he adds.

Unlike the veterans whom Scanlon treated in the rehab hospital, most of Barton’s patients were civilian males ranging from their late teens to their mid-40s or -50s. “They were IT professionals, entrepreneurs, chefs, teachers, and delivery drivers who joined the military because they wanted to defend their country,” Barton says. “They were making amazing sacrifices, hadn’t seen their family for months, and put themselves in danger because they believed in their country and wanted to protect the people they love.”

Now, as Ukraine’s war enters its second year and mass casualties mount, Scanlon and Barton are

both planning to return. They will go back full of gratitude for their Columbia education and the way it has thoroughly qualified them to treat patients and train other providers in a war zone.

“I owe Columbia for sparking a fire in me to do more for nursing, and to show me that I can contribute more internationally and nationally,” says Scanlon. The second phase of the WHO program will focus on training nurses and other providers to rehabilitate patients in hospitals across Ukraine. Barton will either rejoin WHO or sign on with another program that needs his skills. “Sometimes we look at health care as a human right in the context of developing nations or inner-city projects,” he says, “but it is also a human right in war zones, where people deserve compassionate, evidencebased, skilled care.

“Nurse practitioners are experts at this,” Barton declares, “and it feels very powerful, as a representative of the international community, to show we care and want to help.” 

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Fred Barton, MS ’18 (second from right), with fellow volunteers; Barton’s bullet-proof vest; treating a patient in the OR; the contents of Barton’s personal supply kit for providing care in low-resource settings.

Most of Barton’s patients were civilians. “They were making amazing sacrifices, hadn’t seen their family for months, and put themselves in danger because they believed in their country and wanted to protect the people they love.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF FRED BARTON

PERFORMANCE PEAK

HOW COLUMBIA NURSING REACHED FIRST PLACE IN NIH FUNDING— AND WHY IT MATTERS.

BY KENNETH MILLER

Mthat attracts ambitious researchers, and supports them in doing trailblazing work, can make a difference far beyond the campus.

One reliable way to gauge a nursing school’s research mojo is the amount of funding it’s awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). According to that measure, Columbia University School of Nursing recently topped all other nursing schools in the country. In January, when the NIH announced its research funding tallies for fiscal year 2022, Columbia Nursing was ranked #1, with 36 grants total ing $18.7 million.

“This achievement is a tribute to the value of our researchers’ varied and innovative projects, which together serve our mission to advance health for all,” says Dean Lorraine Frazier, PhD. “It also reflects the power of teamwork—the combined effort, dedication,

(DNSc) program, which blossomed into a full-time PhD program in 2008. Distinguished investigators began flocking to the faculty, followed by students eager to learn from and emulate them.

Today, Columbia Nursing’s doctoral program is in the top 10 percent of recipients of federal training grants for pre- and postdoctoral scholars. Faculty members have more than 70 active research grants (including projects funded by foundations and agencies other than the NIH), and they publish dozens of studies in peer-reviewed journals each year. The school’s research centers include:

• Center for Community-Engaged Health Informatics and Data Science, directed

disparities in dementia care and links among sexual identity, social stigma, and cardiovascular disease. They’re developing machinelearning programs to reduce readmissions among home care patients in New York City, informatics platforms to improve obstetrics care in Africa, and mobile apps to boost HIV prevention in Eastern Europe.

And often, a given faculty member is spearheading several such studies at once. “At most nursing schools, it’s remarkable for a faculty member to have even one active NIH grant,” notes Elizabeth Corwin, PhD, the Anna P. Maxwell Professor of Nursing Research and vice dean for strategic and innovative research. “Here, lots of folks have two, three, or even more.”

TThis hive of activity is the product of a carefully cultivated culture of inquiry. Besides recruiting exceptional investigators, the school encourages them to collaborate across nursing-science specialties and with experts in other fields across Columbia’s medical and academic campuses.

Columbia Nursing has also built a robust infrastructure to support nurse-scientists at every stage of their careers. A key component of that effort is the Office of Scholarship and Research Development (OSR), directed by Kristine Kulage, MPH. The office’s mission is to help researchers improve the quality of their grant applications and the manuscripts they submit for publication.

The OSR provides an array of services calculated to leverage faculty members’ expertise. An intramural pilot grant program enables new and early-stage investigators to gather preliminary data they can use to apply for outside support. When researchers get to the proposal-development phase, they can turn to OSR faculty for assistance with biostatistics, data analysis, and related tasks. Kulage herself leads grant-writing workshops for all levels of researchers and

edits drafts for postdoctoral trainees and junior faculty. All these efforts dovetail with those of the Grants Management Office, which helps with the more basic but essential aspects of the grant-application process—filling in forms, developing budgets, ensuring regulatory compliance, and so on.

Before submitting a grant application, all Columbia Nursing researchers also participate in a process called Specific Objectives and Aims Review (SOAR), involving presentation of their study’s aims to fellow faculty members for feedback. In addition, they undergo a mock review protocol, modeled on an NIH study section, receiving real-time critiques of their proposals. And once a study is completed and its results are being written up for publication, the OSR offers manuscript-writing workshops (also led by Kulage) and data-crunching support.

All these programs help explain how the school made it to the top of the NIH funding list. One final ingredient is key, however: a commitment to promoting better care, and to eradicating health disparities, in the United States and around the globe. “Though we love being #1, that’s never been our mission,” says Corwin. “We’re in this for the big picture. Improving the health of patients, their families, and their communities has always been our goal.” 

Dozens of Columbia Nursing faculty and staff, including Dean Lorraine Frazier and Vice Dean of Strategic and Innovative Research Elizabeth Corwin, gathered to celebrate the announcement of the school’s #1 ranking in NIH funding for FY 2022.

The school’s ascendancy in the NIH rankings didn’t come out of nowhere. . . . The march toward the summit had been underway for more than three decades.

MICHAEL DIVITO

GRANTSGALORE

Meet the researchers who helped make Columbia Nursing

#1 in NIH funding—and their projects:

Suzanne Bakken, PhD

Alumni Professor of Nursing and Professor of Biomedical Bioinformatics

• Reaching Communities through the Design of Information Visualizations (ReDIVis) toolbox for return of COVID-19 results. (with Adriana Arcia, PhD, of the University of San Diego)

Lauren Bochicchio, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Scientist

• Understanding the individual and combined impact of childhood sexual abuse and minority stress on hazardous drinking among sexual minority women: Is emotion dysregulation a key factor?

Jean-Marie Bruzzese, PhD

Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology (in Nursing)

• Translating an evidence-based urban asthma program for rural adolescents: Testing effectiveness and cost-effectiveness and understanding factors associated with implementation

• The efficacy of CAMP Air, a web-based asthma intervention, among urban adolescents with uncontrolled asthma

Billy Caceres, PhD

Assistant Professor of Nursing

• Examining associations of sexual identity, life experiences, and cardiovascular disease risk in sisters

Kylie Dougherty

PhD Student

• Leveraging informatics to enhance the obstetrics emergency supply chain in Amhara, Ethiopia

Leah Estrada

PhD Student

• Racial/ethnic differences in palliative care services and potentially avoidable hospitalizations at end-of-life in nursing homes nationwide

Maureen George, PhD

Professor of Nursing

The names in the headings are those of the grants’ contact principal investigator (PI). On grants with multiple PIs, the names of co-PIs are noted in parentheses.

• Contextualizing asthma self-management with measures of indoor air quality for Black adults with uncontrolled asthma

• Development and pilot testing of a caregiver-child shared decision-making intervention to improve asthma in urban youth (with Jean-Marie Bruzzese)

• BREATHE: An efficacy-implementation trial of a brief shared decision-making intervention among Black adults with uncontrolled Asthma in Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC)

Tonda Hughes, PhD

Henrik H. Bendixen Professor of International Nursing

• Stress, hazardous drinking, and intimate partner aggression in a diverse sample of women and their partners

Jung (Chloe) Kang

PhD Student

• Health disparities in timely goals of care discussions and hospitalizations due to infections in nursing home residents

Corina Lelutiu-Weinberger, PhD

Associate Professor of Health Sciences Research (in Nursing)

• Preparing for pre-exposure prophylaxis implementation in Central-Eastern European countries with low access to biomedical prevention (with John Pachankis, PhD, of Yale University)

• Building mobile HIV prevention and mental health support in low-resource settings (with John Pachankis)

• Ending the HIV Epidemic with Equity: an all-facility intervention to reduce structural racism and discrimination and its impact on patient and healthcare staff wellbeing (with Felicia Browne, ScD, of RTI International)

Ruth Masterson Creber, PhD Professor of Nursing

• Randomized comparison of the clinical outcome of single versus multiple arterial grafts: Cognition — two grants: a parent award and a supplement (with Mario Gaudino, MD, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medical College, and Richard Swartz, MD, PhD, of the University of Toronto)

• Improve the Meaning of Patient Reported Outcomes to Evaluate Effectiveness for Cardiac Care (IMPROVE-Cardiac Care)

Lusine Poghosyan, PhD

Stone Foundation and Elise D. Fish Professor of Nursing and Professor of Health Policy and Management

• Home-based primary care for persons living with dementia: Nurse practitioner teams and outcomes (with Zainab Osakwe, PhD, of Adelphi University College of Nursing)

• Care for persons with dementia in nurse practitioner practices and racial and ethnic health disparities — two grants: a parent award and a supplement

Rebecca Schnall, PhD’09

Mary Dickey Lindsay Professor of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (in Nursing) and Professor of Population and Family Health

• CHAMPS: A randomized trial of a community health worker intervention for persons living with HIV in two high priority settings (with Scott Batey, PhD, of Tulane University School of Social Work)

• Examining social, ecological, and network factors to assess epidemiological risk in a large national cohort of cisgender women (with Amy Johnson, PhD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and Mirjam-Colette Kempf, PhD, of the University of Alabama)

• Reducing health disparities through informatics (with Suzanne Bakken)

• MyPEEPS Mobile LITE: Limited interaction efficacy trial of MyPEEPS Mobile to reduce HIV incidence and better understand the epidemiology of HIV among YMSM (with Dustin Duncan, ScD, associate professor of epidemiology, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and Robert Garofalo, MD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine)

• Development and testing of MyPEEPS Mobile for young transgender men (with Robert Garofalo)

• mLab app for improving uptake of rapid HIV self-testing and linking youth to care (with Robert Garofalo)

• Development and pilot testing of a just-in-time mobile smoking cessation intervention for persons living with HIV (with Ming-Chun Huang, PhD, of Case Western Reserve School of Engineering)

• Mentoring and research in self-management for health promotion and disease prevention

Jingjing Shang, PhD Professor of Nursing

• Impact of COVID-19 on care transitions and health outcomes for vulnerable populations in nursing homes and home healthcare agencies (with Patricia Stone, PhD, Centennial Professor of Health Policy)

• Infection prevention in home health care (with Patricia Stone)

Katherine South PhD Student

• Expectations and outcomes of healthcare transition in adolescents and young adults with cystic fibrosis

Patricia Stone, PhD

Centennial Professor of Health Policy

• Center for Improving Palliative Care for Vulnerable Adults with MCC (CIPC) (with Jingjing Shang)

• Comparative and Cost-Effectiveness Research Training for Nurse Scientists (with Lusine Poghosyan)

Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD’18

Assistant Professor of Nursing

• Data-driven shared decision-making to reduce symptom burden in atrial fibrillation

Sarah Zollweg PhD Student

• Influence of multilevel minority stress on hazardous drinking among sexual minority women

Selected Faculty

Publications

Our faculty’s research continues to create new knowledge that advances health care. Listed are selected articles from leading peer-reviewed publications.

Gregory Alexander was among the authors of “Calling All Nurses—Now Is the Time to Take Action on Improving the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes,” published in Nursing Outlook; a correction to “An Evaluation of Telehealth Expansion in U.S. Nursing Homes,” published in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association; “Strategic Recommendations for Higher Quality Nursing Home Care in the United States: The NASEM Report,” published in Journal of Gerontological Nursing; and “Strategic Recommendations for Higher Quality Nurs-

ing Home Care in the United States: The NASEM Report,” a guest editorial published in Research in Gerontological Nursing

Adriana Arcia and Suzanne Bakken were among the authors of “Comparison of Newest Vital Sign and Brief Health Literacy Sceen Scores in a Large, Urban Hispanic Cohort,” published in Patient Education and Counseling.

Suzanne Bakken was among the authors of “Feasibility and Acceptability of the Adherence Connection Counseling, Education,

and Support (ACCESS) Proof of Concept: A Peer-Led, Mobile Health (mHealth) Cognitive Behavioral Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Adherence Intervention for HIV-Infected (HIV+) Adolescents and Young Adults (AYA),” published in AIDS and Behavior, and “Informatics and Data Science Perspective on Future of Nursing 2020

2030: Charting A Pathway to Health Equity,” published in Nursing Outlook.

Veronica Barcelona was among the authors of “Integration of Medication for Opioid Use Disorder Training into Graduate Nursing Education,” published in Nursing Forum.

Veronica Barcelona and Laura Britton, MS ’16, were among the authors of “Adverse Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes in Sexual

Selected Faculty Publications

Minority Women from the National Survey of Family Growth,” published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Veronica Barcelona, Billy Caceres, and Jacquelyn Taylor were among the authors of “Adverse Childhood Experiences Influence DNAm Profile Among Mothers and Children in the InterGEN Study,” published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences, and “Experiences of Trauma and DNA Methylation Profiles Among African American Mothers and Children,” published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Veronica Barcelona and Jacquelyn Taylor were among the authors of “Police Discrimination and Depressive Symptoms in African American Women: The Intergenerational Impact of Genetic and Psychological Factors on Blood Pressure (InterGEN) Study,” published in Health Equity, and “Stress Overload and DNA Methylation in African American Women in the Intergenerational Impact of Genetic and Psychological Factors on Blood Pressure Study,” published in Epigenetics Insights.

Melissa Beauchemin, PhD ’19, was among the authors of “Creating and Adapting an Infection Management Care Pathway in Pediatric Oncology,” published in Support Care in Cancer; “Guideline for the Management of Fever and Neutropenia in Pediatric Patients with Cancer and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Recipients: 2023 Update,” published in Journal of Clinical Oncology ; and “Oral Mercaptopurine Adherence in Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: A Survey Study from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Consortium,” published in Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Nursing.

PhD student Joseph Belloir and Walter Bockting were among the authors of “Examining the Role of Problematic Drug Use in the Relationship Between Discrimination and Sleep Disturbance in Transgender and Nonbinary Individuals,” published in Addictive Behaviors.

Natalie Benda was among the authors of “Identifying Nonpatient Authors of Patient Portal Secure Messages in Oncology: A Proof-of-Concept Demonstration of Natural Language Processing Methods,” published in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, and “Prediction of Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction Changes in Heart Failure Patients Using Machine Learning and Electronic Health Records: A Multi-Site Study,” published in Scientific Reports

Natalie Benda and Ruth Masterson Creber were among the authors of “Developing Population Health Surveillance Using mHealth in Low-Resource Settings: Qualitative Assessment and Pilot Evaluation,” published in JMIR (Journal of Medical Internet Research) Formative Research.

Lauren Bochicchio was among the authors of “‘Getting the Staff to Understand It’: Leadership Perspectives on Peer Specialists Before and After the Implementation of a Peer-Delivered Healthy Lifestyle Intervention,” published in Community Mental Health Journal.

Walter Bockting and Maureen George were among the authors of “Childbearing at the Margins: A Systematic Metasynthesis of Sexual and Gender Diverse Childbearing Experiences,” published in Birth

Donald Boyd, PhD ’17, was co-author of “CRNA Engagement During the COVID-19 Crisis: Optimization of Resource Management, Organizational Climate, and Contributions to Care,” published in AANA Journal

Laura Britton, MS ’16, was among the authors of “Contraceptive Method Denial as Downward Contraceptive Coercion: A Mixed-Methods Mystery Client Study in Western Kenya,” published in Contraception; “Contraceptive Stockouts in Western Kenya: A Mixed-Methods Mystery Client Study,” published in Contraception; “Frequency and Impact of Long Wait Times for Family Planning in Public-Sector Healthcare Facilities in Western Kenya,” published in Global Health Action; and “Provider

Verbal Disrespect in the Provision of Family Planning in Public-Sector Facilities in Western Kenya,” published in SSM—Qualitative Research in Health.

Laura Britton, MS ’16, and Suzanne Bakken were among the authors of “Factors Influencing the Conduction of Confidential Conversations with Adolescents in the Emergency Department: A Multicenter, Qualitative Analysis,” published in Academic Emergency Medicine.

Laura Britton, MS ’16, and Maureen George were among the authors of “‘We Tend to Prioritise Others and Forget Ourselves’: How Women’s Caregiving Responsibilities Can Facilitate or Impede Diabetes Self-Management,” published in Diabetic Medicine.

Laura Britton, MS ’16, Elise Mantell, PhD ’21, and Maureen George were among the authors of “Findings from a Mixed-Methods Journey Map Study of Barriers to Family Planning in Western Kenya,” published in Health Care for Women International.

Jean-Marie Bruzzese was among the authors of “Anxiety Among Pediatric Asthma Patients and Their Parents and Quick-Reliever Medication Use: The Role of Physical Activity Parenting Behaviours,” published in the World Allergy Organization Journal; “Demand-Avoid-Withdraw Processes in Adolescent Dating Aggression,” published in Aggressive Behavior; “The Effects of the Historical Practice of Residential Redlining in the United States on Recent Temporal Trends of Air Pollution near New York City Schools,” published in Environment International; and “Mind-Body Integrative Health (MBIH) Interventions for Sleep Among Adolescents: A Scoping Review of Implementation, Participation, and Outcomes,” published in Adolescent Research Review.

Billy Caceres was among the authors of “Sexual Minority Health and Allostatic Load in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: A Systematic Scoping Review with Intersectional Implications,” published in Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Billy Caceres, Veronica Barcelona, and Jacquelyn Taylor were among the authors of “The Interaction of Trauma Exposure and DNA Methylation on Blood Pressure Among Black Women in the InterGEN Study,” published in Epigenetics Insights

Billy Caceres, Ruby Shah, and Tonda Hughes were among the authors of “Sexual and Gender Minority Health in Chile: Findings from the 2016–2017 Health Survey,” published in Revista de Saúde Pública

Kenrick Cato, PhD ’14, and Lusine Poghosyan were among the authors of “Exploring the Relationship Between Nurse Practitioner Full Practice Authority, Nurse Practitioner Workforce Diversity, and Disparate Primary Care Access,” published in Policy, Politics, and Nursing Practice.

Kenrick Cato, PhD ’14, and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “Black and Latinx Primary Caregiver Considerations for Developing and Implementing a Machine Learning-Based Model for Detecting Child Abuse and Neglect with Implications for Racial Bias Reduction: Qualitative Interview Study with Primary Caregivers,” published in JMIR Formative Research.

Ashley Chastain, PhD student Jung Kang, Patricia Stone, and Jingjing Shang were among the authors of “Systematic Review of Rural and Urban Differences in Care Provided by Home Health Agencies in the United States,” published in Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.

Ashley Chastain, Uduwanage Gayani Perera, Patricia Stone, and Jingjing Shang were among the authors of “Health Information Technology Adoption at U.S. Home Health Care Agencies: Results from a Multi-Methods Study,” published in Home Health Care Management and Practice.

Elizabeth Corwin was among the authors of “Correction: Maternal Genitourinary Infections and Poor Nutritional Status Increase Risk of Preterm Birth in Gasabo District, Rwanda: A Prospective, Longitudinal,

Cohort Study,” published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, and “Discrimination Is Associated with Poor Sleep Quality in Pregnant Black American Women,” published in Sleep Medicine

Ruth Masterson Creber was among the authors of “Enhancing Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Education Through GameBased Augmented Reality Face Filters,” published in Resuscitation; “Heterogeneity of Teaching Approaches to Determine Hand Position for Adult Chest Compressions Among European Basic Life Support Instructors,” published in Resuscitation; “Randomized Comparison of the Clinical Outcome of Single Versus Multiple Arterial Grafts: Quality of Life (ROMA:QOL) — Rationale and Study Protocol,” published in European Heart Journal — Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes (EHJ-QCCO); “State of the Science: The Relevance of Symptoms in Cardiovascular Disease and Research: A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association,” published in Circulation; and “Time to Tune In,” published in Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.

PhD student Christine DeForge, Maureen George, PhD student Katherine South, Melissa Beauchemin, PhD ’19, Marlene McHugh, DNP ’08, and Arlene Smaldone, PhD ’03, were among the authors of “Do Interventions Improve Symptoms Among ICU Surrogates Facing Endof-Life Decisions? A Prognostically Enriched Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” published in Critical Care Medicine.

Stephanie Niño de Rivera, Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, Natalie Benda, and Ruth Masterson Creber were among the authors of “Returning Study Results to Research Participants: Data Access, Format, and Sharing Preferences,” published in International Journal of Medical Informatics.

Andrew Dick was among the authors of “An Exploratory Analysis of Differential Prescribing of High-Risk Opioids by Insurance Type Among Patients Seen by the Same Clinician,” published in Journal of General Internal Medicine.

PhD student Kylie Dougherty and Maureen George were among the authors of “Experiences of Women with Physical Disabilities Accessing Prenatal Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries,” published in Public Health Nursing.

Susan Doyle-Lindrud, DNP ’08, was the author of “Personalized Cancer Care,” published in Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners

PhD student Leah Estrada and Patricia Stone were among the authors of “Systematic Review of Conceptual and Theoretical Frameworks Used in Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Research Studies,” published in Palliative Medicine.

Stephen Ferrara and Adriana Arcia were among the authors of “Telehealth After Stroke Care Pilot Randomized Trial of Home Blood Pressure Telemonitoring in an Underserved Setting,” published in Stroke.

Student Adero Gaudin and Maureen George were among the authors of “Spine Surgery Patients’ Perceptions of Postoperative Pulmonary Complications,” published in Clinical Nursing Research.

Maureen George was among the authors of “Asthma Impairment and Risk Questionnaire (AIRQ) Control Level Predicts Future Risk of Asthma Exacerbations,” published in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, and “Relationship Between Asthma Control as Measured by the Asthma Impairment and Risk Questionnaire (AIRQ) and Patient Perception of Disease Status, Health-Related Quality of Life, and Treatment Adherence,” published in Journal of Asthma and Allergy.

Student Sophie Gloeckler was among the authors of “An Ethical Framework for Incorporating Digital Technology into Advance Directives: Promoting Informed Advance Decision Making in Healthcare,” published in Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

Selected Faculty Publications

Amanda Hessels was among the authors of “APIC Megasurvey 2020: Methodology and Overview of Results,” published in American Journal of Infection Control, and “State of Infection Prevention and Control in Nonacute Care US Settings: 2020 APIC MegaSurvey,” published in American Journal of Infection Control

Student Mollie Hobensack, Jiyoun Song, PhD ’20, student Danielle Scharp, and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “Machine Learning Applied to Electronic Health Record Data in Home Healthcare: A Scoping Review,” published in International Journal of Health Informatics.

Tonda Hughes was among the authors of “Examining Differences in Alcohol and Smoking Behaviors Between Parenting and Nonparenting Lesbian Women,” published in Substance Use & Misuse; “Gender SelfConcept and Hazardous Drinking Among Sexual Minority Women: Results from the Chicago Health and Life Experiences of Women (CHLEW) Study,” published in Addictive Behaviors; “Is It All in the Family?

Sexual Identity Differences in DSM-5 Alcohol and Other Drug Use Disorders and Associations with Alcohol and Other Drug Misuse History Among Parents, Offspring, and Other Relatives,” published in Substance Abuse; “Palliative and End-of-Life Care Needs, Experiences, and Preferences for LGBTQ+ Individuals with Serious Illness: A Systematic Mixed-Methods Review,” published in Palliative Medicine; “Sexual Orientation Disparities in Experiences of Male-Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence: A Focus on the Preconception and Perinatal Period,” published in Women’s Health Issues; and “Testing Whether the Combination of Victimization and Minority Stressors Exacerbate PTSD Risks in a Diverse Community Sample of Sexual Minority Women,” published in Psychology & Sexuality.

Tonda Hughes and PhD student Sarah Zollweg were among the authors of “A Latent Class Analysis of Tailored Substance Use Treatment Programs: Implications for

Treating

Syndemic Conditions

Facing Sexual and Gender Minority Populations,” published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

DNP student Nia Josiah was among the authors of “Factors Influencing Intrapartum Health Outcomes Among Black Birthing Persons: A Discursive Paper,” published in Journal of Advanced Nursing

PhD student Jung Kang, Ashley Chastain, and Jingjing Shang were among the authors of “Measuring Palliative Care—Related Knowledge, Attitudes, and Confidence in Home Health Care Clinicians, Patients, and Caregivers: A Systematic Review,” published in Journal of Palliative Medicine.

Elaine Larson was among the authors of “Surveillance for Acute Respiratory Illnesses in Pediatric Chronic Care Facilities,” published in Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

Student Sarah Leonard, MS ’20, Yihong Zhao, Amarilis Céspedes, and Jean-Marie Bruzzese were among the authors of “GroupBased Medical Mistrust in Adolescents with Poorly Controlled Asthma Living in Rural Areas,” published in Health Promotion Practice.

Jianfang Liu and Gregory Alexander were among the authors of “A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Telehealth Implementation in Nursing Homes Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic,” published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Jianfang Liu and Jean-Marie Bruzzese were among the authors of “Asthma Is Associated with Bullying Victimization in Rural Adolescents,” published in Journal of Asthma.

Jianfang Liu and Kasey Jackman, PhD ’17, were among the authors of “Stigma Towards Patients with Mental Illness: An Online Survey of United States Nurses,” published in International Journal of Mental Health Nursing.

Phoenix Matthews was among the authors of “Barriers to PrEP Uptake Among Black Female Adolescents and Emerging Adults,” published in Preventive Medicine Reports; “Factors Influencing the Well-Being of Asian American LGBT Individuals Across the Lifespan: Perspectives from Leaders of Community-Based Organizations,” published in BMC Geriatrics; and “Sexual Minority Status, School-Based Violence, and Current Tobacco Use Among Youth,” published in Tobacco Prevention and Cessation

Se Hee Min, Maxim Topaz, and Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, were among the authors of “Understanding Changes in Mental Health Symptoms from Young-Old to Old-Old Adults by Sex Using Multiple-Group Latent Transition Analysis,” published in GeroScience.

Student Shazia Mitha, Billy Caceres, Elizabeth Corwin, Ruth Masterson Creber, Megan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, and Suzanne Bakken were among the authors of “Response to Mental Health of Cardiac Procedure Patients Should Be a Priority for All Healthcare Providers,” published in Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.

Allison Norful, PhD ’17, was co-author of “A Peripandemic Examination of Health Care Worker Burnout and Implications for Clinical Practice, Education, and Research,” published in JAMA Network Open. She was also among the authors of “Initial Psychometric Properties of the Provider-Co-Management Index-RN to Scale Registered Nurse-Physician Co-Management Implications for Burnout, Job Satisfaction, and Intention to Leave Current Position,” published in Journal of Interprofessional Care.

Uduwanage Gayani Perera and Patricia Stone were among the authors of “A Profile of Black and Latino Older Adults Receiving Care in Nursing Homes: 2011–2017,” published in Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.

Nancy Reame was the author of “Inflammaging or Inflamm-opause: Is Inflammation

the Cause or Consequence of Vasomotor Symptoms?” published in Menopause.

Nancy Reame and Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, were among the authors of “Do Correlates of White Matter Features Differ Between Older Men and Women Living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus?” published in Menopause.

Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, was among the authors of “Patient-Centered Mobile Tuberculosis Treatment Support Tools (TB-TSTs) to Improve Treatment Adherence: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial Exploring Feasibility, Acceptability, and Refinement Needs,” published in Lancet Regional Health, Americas.

Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, Jianfang Liu, Sarah Ganzhorn, and Paul Trujillo were among the authors of “A Smoking Cessation Mobile App for Persons Living with HIV: Preliminary Efficacy and Feasibility Study,” published in JMIR Formative Research.

Student Yashika Sharma, MS ’20, Danny Doan, and Billy Caceres were among the authors of “Examination of Sexual Identity Differences in the Prevalence of Hypertension and Antihypertensive Medication Use Among US Adults: Findings from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System,” published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes

PhD student Kodiak Ray Sung Soled and Ronica Mukerjee, MS ’08, were among the authors of “Interdisciplinary Clinicians’ Attitudes, Challenges, and Success Strategies in Providing Care to Transgender People: A Qualitative Descriptive Study,” published in BMC Health Services Research.

Jiyoun Song, PhD ’20, was among the authors of “The Identification of Clusters of Risk Factors and Their Association with Hospitalizations or Emergency Department Visits in Home Health Care,” published in Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Jiyoun Song, PhD ’20, Kenrick Cato, PhD ’14, Sarah Collins Rossetti, PhD ’09, student Molly

Hobensack, and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “The Identification of Clusters of Risk Factors and Their Association with Hospitalizations or Emergency Department Visits in Home Health Care,” published in Journal of Advanced Nursing

Jiyoun Song, PhD ’20, PhD student Mollie Hobensack, and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “Factors Associated with Poor Self-Management Documented in Home Health Care Narrative Notes for Patients with Heart Failure,” published in Heart and Lung: The Journal of Critical Care.

Jacquelyn Taylor was among the authors of “Associations Between DNA Methylation Age Acceleration, Depressive Symptoms, and Cardiometabolic Traits in African American Mothers from the InterGEN study,” published in Epigenetic Insights; “Depressive Symptom Phenotypes Among Black/African American Mothers from the InterGEN Study: A Latent Class Analysis,” published in Nursing Research; and “Sex-Dimorphic Gene Effects on Survival Outcomes in People with Coronary Artery Disease,” published in American Heart Journal Plus: Cardiology Research and Practice

Jacquelyn Taylor, Stephanie Potts-Thompson, Veronica Barcelona, and Laura Prescott were among the authors of “Epigenome-wide Association Study of BMI in Black Populations from InterGEN and GENOA,” published in Obesity

Maxim Topaz and Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, were among the authors of “Understanding Changes in Mental Health Symptoms from Young-Old to Old-Old Adults by Using Sex Multiple-Group Latent Transition Analysis,” published in GeroScience.

Maxim Topaz, Jiyoun Song, PhD ’20, and Jacquelyn Taylor were among the authors of “Home Healthcare Clinicians Use Judgment Language More Frequently for Black and Hispanic Patients: A Natural Language Processing Study,” published in a pre-print version online in JMIR Nursing.

Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, was among the authors of “Designing for Patient Decision-Making: Design Challenges Generated by Patients with Atrial Fibrillation During Evaluation of a Decision Aid Prototype,” published in Frontiers in Digital Health, and “‘Replace Uncertainty with Information’: Shared Decision-making and Decision Quality Surrounding Catheter Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation,” published in European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing

Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, and Ruth Masterson Creber were among the authors of “Building Trust in Research Through Information and Intent Transparency with Health Information: Representative Cross-Sectional Survey of 502 US Adults,” published in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association; “Detecting Early Physiologic Changes Through Cardiac Implantable Electronic Device Data Among Patients with COVID-19,” published in Cardiovascular Digital Health Journal; “Faces Scales for Anxiety and Anger: A National Study of Measurement Properties,” published in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry; and “Special Section on Patient Engagement in Informatics: A RE-AIM Evaluation of a Visualization-Based Electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes System,” published in Applied Clinical Informatics

Students Eleanor Turi and Amy McMenamin and Lusine Poghosyan were among the authors of “Primary Care Provider Confidence in Addressing Opioid Use Disorder: A Concept Analysis,” published in Research in Nursing and Health

Mariah Xu was among the authors of “Social Cognitive Mechanisms Between Psychological Maltreatment and Adolescent Suicide Ideation: Race/Ethnicity and Gender as Moderators,” published in Psychology of Violence.

Student Sarah Zollweg was among the authors of “Corrigendum to ‘Impact of the Policy Environment on Substance Use Among Sexual Minority Women,’” published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports.

A GLIMPSE OF ALUMNI EVENTS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

Photographs by Michael DiVito

1: Adeel Haque ’12MS, Beqir Brija ’22MS, Haley Pearson ’22MS, and Christian Cansino ’17DNP at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Networking Reception in February 2023.

2: Faye Wattleton ’67MS (center), with Vivian Taylor and Columbia alumni at Reflections on Reproductive Justice in November 2022.

3: Maribeth Massie ’98MS and her husband at the American Academy of Nursing’s Induction Ceremony and Soiree in October 2022.

4: Ana Kelly, Elizabeth Cohn ’09PhD, Kenrick Cato ’14PhD, Karol Dibello, Elizabeth Corwin, Suzanne Bakken, Lusine Poghosyan, Gregory Alexander, Mary Moran ’08MS, Caroyn Sun ’15PhD at the American Academy of Nursing’s Induction Ceremony and Soiree in October 2022.

5: Columbia Nursing students at the alumni-hosted Hot Chocolate Student Study Break in December 2022.

6: Columbia Nursing student Allison Fuller, Karen Hein, and Nadine Ferguson at the Annual Dean’s Dinner in February 2023.

7: Columbia Nursing students celebrating Columbia Giving Day at the alumni-hosted Student Study Break in October 2022.

8: Felesia Bowen ’10PhD and Columbia Nursing students at the Annual Dean’s Dinner in February 2023.

9: Rosalind Kendellen ’74MS, Alexis Devens ’19MS, and Gary Kendellen at the Annual Dean’s Dinner in February 2023.

10: Angela Clarke Duff ’70BS, Marjorie Harrison Fleming ’69BS, and Sally Shipley Stone ’69BS at the Annual Dean’s Dinner in February 2023.

11: Karol Dibello, Mary Moran ’08MS, and Ana Kelly at the American Academy of Nursing’s Induction Ceremony and Soiree in October 2022.

12: Columbia Nursing students and alumni at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Networking Reception in February 2023.

13: Faye Wattleton ’67MS, with Vivian Taylor and Columbia Nursing students at Reflections on Reproductive Justice in November 2022.

14: Columbia Nursing students at the alumni-hosted Hot Chocolate Student Study Break in December 2022.

From the Alumni Association President

Dear Columbia Nursing Alumni,

Greetings on behalf of the Alumni Association. I am humbled to be continuing to serve as your president.

We had an exciting start to 2022, when we welcomed alumni back to campus for in-person events while celebrating our 130th anniversary. It was invigorating and inspiring to see everyone back in the building for Alumni Reunion, the Black Student and Alumni Mixer, the Graduation Celebration for the classes of 2020 and 2021, the New Student Orientation Trivia event, and many others.

My role as president of the school’s Alumni Association is to assist in representing the voice of nearly 11,000 Columbia Nursing alumni living and working around the world. The Alumni Association is your opportunity to stay involved in the life of the school. We are a vibrant community where graduates have the opportunity to learn, network, give back to their community, and socialize.

This past year, the goal of the Alumni Association Board of Directors has been to bridge the gap between alumni and students. The Student Engagement Working Group was formed to build a working relationship with current students to better serve their needs. The committee has been working closely with the Student Council to create events, networking opportunities, and mentorship connections.

The Alumni Association represents a diverse group of active alumni who want to stay connected to Columbia Nursing and engage with their fellow alums. I would like to introduce the three newest members of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, who described the impact that they intend to make by being on the board:

• Jesus Casida ’96MS: I will inform and assist Columbia Nursing in accomplishing its research, teaching, and service missions, all while it maintains its stature as one of the most forwardthinking schools of nursing in the nation and the world.

• Lora Peppard ’08DNP: I will work with the Alumni Association Board of Directors to reinforce the strong infrastructure Columbia Nursing has built to guide, nurture, and support Columbia nurses in their academic and professional journeys.

• Vaneh Hovsepian ’22PhD: I would like to promote interdisciplinary collaborations and networking opportunities among nursing and other schools within Columbia University.

If you would like to participate in a volunteer committee, become more engaged with the school, host an event, or update your contact information, please get in touch with our alumni office at sonalumni@cumc.columbia.edu or 212-305-5999.

On behalf of the Alumni Association, I hope you have a wonderful summer and I look forward to hearing from you and seeing many of you at future events both locally and regionally. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay up to date.

Warm Regards,

Kevin Browne ’92MS, DNP, RN, CNS, CCRN-K President, Columbia Nursing Alumni Association

Senior Vice President, Chief Nurse Executive, St. Joseph’s Health

2022-2023

Alumni Association Board of Directors

Daniel Billings ’18DNP

Felesia Bowen ’10PhD

Kevin Browne ’92MS, President

Nicolas Burry ’20DNP

Jesus Casida ’96MS

Mollie Finkel ’12MS, Nominating Chair

Hilda Haynes Lewis ’99MS

Christa Simpson Heinsler ’76BS, Secretary

Kevin Hook ’98BS

Vaneh Hovsepian ’22PhD

Rosalind Kendellen ’74MS

Kimberly Lanfranca ’06MS

Lora Peppard ’08DNP

Marjorie Salas Weis ’17DNP

Olivia Velez ’11PhD

Julie Yoshimachi ’20DNP

Congratulations to Laura Ardizzone

’10DNP on receiving the 2022 Columbia Alumni Medalist Award. This distinguished award recognizes alumni across Columbia University for their service of 10 years or more to the university, including its schools, alumni associations, cross-campus initiatives, regional Columbia Clubs, and universitywide initiatives.

Class Notes

1980s

Susan Fox ’84BS was selected as one of Crain’s New York Business 2022 Notable Healthcare Leaders.

Kathleen Utter King ’85MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American College of Nurse-Midwives.

Gina Novick ’80BS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

1990s

Joan O’Hanlon Curry ’98MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Deborah Hoch ’96MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.

Maribeth Massie ’98MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Nancy Moriber ’90MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology.

Beth Oliver ’91MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

2000s

Ronald Castaldo ’02MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology.

Karen Desjardins ’05DNP was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award for Nursing Education.

Susan Doyle-Lindrud ’08DNP was named Honorary Senior Fellow in Nursing by the University of Melbourne.

Patricia Dykes ’04PhD created “Fall Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety (TIPS),” a program selected as a novel model of care and named an Edge Runner by the American Academy of Nursing.

Kristen Dyroff ’05MS is the owner and CEO of New Mommy Guru, a virtual program she created to help pregnant women better prepare for their newborns so they can confidently master new motherhood.

Sarah Giron ’05MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology.

Judy Honig ’05DNP was selected as one of Crain’s New York Business 2022 Notable Healthcare Leaders. She was also named Honorary Senior Fellow in Nursing by the University of Melbourne.

Rita John ’05DNP edited a book titled Pediatric Diagnostic Labs for Primary Care.

Jared Kutzin ’05BS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Marlene McHugh ’08DNP was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Joan Miravite ’01MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Mary Moran ’08MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing. She was also named to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center Academy of Community and Public Service class of 2022.

Ronica Mukerjee ’08MS was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

JoAnne Silbert-Flagg ’09DNP was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.

Katherine Steinle ’09MS was quoted in USA Today, commenting on the importance of access to gender-affirming care.

2010s

Felesia Bowen ’10PhD was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award for a Distinguished Career in Nursing.

Jeanne Churchill ’10DNP was named to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center Academy of Community and Public Service class of 2022.

Pamela de Cordova ’11PhD was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award for Nursing Research.

Class Notes and In Memoriam

Ellen Fahey ’11DNP was named to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center Academy of Community and Public Service class of 2022.

Donte Flanagan ’17DNP was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology.

Sabrina McCauley ’10DNP was named to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center Academy of Community and Public Service class of 2022.

Alison Norful ’17PhD is the 2023 recipient of the Advocate State Award for Excellence in New York, awarded by the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

Carolyn Sun ’15PhD was inducted as a 2022 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Meghan Reading Turchioe ’18PhD joined Columbia Nursing as assistant professor of nursing. Turchioe was also awarded Columbia

2022-2023

In Memoriam

1920s

Helen MacKay ’28MS

1940s

Marita Halsey Ritterhoff ’45MS

Eleanor Ehl-McConnell ’46MS

Patricia Hayes Keough ’46BS

Lorna Van Scoy Reding ’47

Helen Stein Alexander ’49MS

Elizabeth Raimet Bechtel ’49

Carolyn Stueck Donnet ’49BS

June Abercrombie Hutchison ’49

Nancy Thompson Tisdale ’49

1950s

Beatrice Dorbacker ’50BS

Marguerite Griffin Irving ’50BS

Frances Salter Thompson ’50BS

Dawn Newnham Teator ’51BS

Lucy Fitzpatrick Wierum ’51BS

Jean Willis Vernon ’52BS

Emily Rider Given ’53BS

Joan Herndon Hinz ’53BS

Joyce Miller Jelliffe ’53BS

Janet Mills Nankervis ’53BS

Patricia Tibbals Schnack ’54BS

Lois Wagner Cline ’55

Olive Sibold Crepon ’55BS

Beverly Roberts Mulder ’55BS

Anne McGowan Kubic ’56BS

Barbara Hackney Baron ’57BS

Barbara Wanamaker Clements ’57BS

Margery Nettleton ’57BS

Joan Koll Borneman ’58BS

Nancy Fletcher Cathers ’58BS

Elizabeth Phelan Lawlor ’58BS

Ann Dunning Painter ’59BS

Helen Schneider ’59MS

Amerlia Hersom Waible ’59BS

Candee Ives Weed ’59BS

1960s

Frances Barker Melia ’60BS

Nancy Kiener Schullinger ’60BS

Ann Lounsbury Wheeler ’60BS

Naomi Shubin Atrubin ’61BS

Alyce Channing Crider ’61BS

Anna Dickson ’61MS

Virginia Pritchard ’61BS

Sandra Woodward Ambrosi ’62BS

Janet Christie Farbent ’62BS

Marjorie Patterson Westergaard ’63BS

Lynn Strayer Pfeifer ’64BS

Mary Bozzo Allen ’67BS

Nursing’s 2022 Early Career Alumni Award: Emerging Nurse Leader. She was a finalist for the American Heart Association Council on Cardiovascular and Stroke Nursing’s Martha N. Hill Early Career Investigator Award.

Olivia Velez ’06BS ’11PhD joined IntraHealth as the new chief digital health officer.

Po-Yin Yen ’10PhD was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award for Nursing Research.

Eila Shea ’67BS

Helen Krantz Merriam ’68BS

Nancy Billingham MacNider ’69BS

Patricia Croke Gaine ’69BS

Christine Fuller Tinstman ’69BS

1970s

Ruth Rhoda Clark ’73BS

Bonnie Bogdasarian ’74BS

Joan Denny ’74MS

Jeanette Hebel Borycz ’76BS

Sharon Pollard Gill ’79MS

1980s

Vivian Adler ’79BS ’86MS

Georgia Begnaud ’86MS

1990s

Sandra Lund ’90BS

Sarah McCown ’95BS

Patricia Mary Telford ’93BS ’95MS

Leena Joseph ’98MS

Fay Rose ’98MS

2000s

Katherine Irene Jones ’00MS

560 West 168th Street, MC 6 New York, NY 10032

IMPACT THE OF SCHOLARSHIP SUPPORT

“Creating a nursing scholarship was important to my parents because it enables the best and brightest of candidates to enter an important and rewarding field, regardless of means. My mom’s life was all about helping people — as a nurse, a social worker, and a therapist — so she and my dad believed beginning a scholarship was a way to help others follow their dreams.”

— Robin Simmons Turner, daughter of Richard and Mary Bleecker Simmons BS’60

“Being the inaugural scholar means that a family believed in me and my story and wanted to support a student with minimal resources as they embarked on the journey of a lifetime. I am thankful that there are good people who believe in the power of education.”

— Jocelyn Velazquez, Mary Bleecker Simmons BS’60 Full Tuition Clinical Nursing Scholar

For more information about giving to Columbia Nursing, visit nursing.columbia.edu/giving or contact

Janice Rafferty Grady, associate dean, Development and Alumni Relations, at jar2272@cumc.columbia.edu.

Jocelyn Velazquez, left, and Robin Simmons Turner