Nursing is, above all, about people. At the Connell School, this simple truth inspires our work and reminds us of why our profession is such a powerful force—one that blends knowledge, innovation, and human connection to change lives. Our students and faculty aren’t just preparing for the future of health care, they’re creating it, through cutting-edge research, academic excellence, and compassionate clinical practice.
In this issue of Voice, you’ll find stories that reflect the many dimensions of nursing today. We celebrate the extraordinary work of nurse-midwives, whose skilled, compassionate care supports families through life’s most meaningful transitions— a powerful reminder that excellence in nursing requires both science and heart.
We also explore the essential role of ethics in guiding nurses through complex clinical decisions with integrity and purpose. And we highlight the power of a Ph.D. education and the ways nurse scientists are transforming care through research grounded in practice.
These stories reflect a profession with impact, and a community leading the way. At CSON, we are proud to see nurses rising to meet the moment. I hope these articles fill you with pride and inspiration.
Sincerely,
Katherine e. gregorY dean
dean
Katherine E. Gregory
editors
Sara Shay
Kathleen Sullivan
managing editor
Tracy Bienen
art director
Christine Hunt
contribUtors
Kara Baskin
Steven Constantine
Tim Gower
Devon Halliday
Ellen Seaward
Kathleen Sullivan
photographers
Caitlin Cunningham
Peter Julian
Lee Pellegrini
Voice is published by the William F. Connell School of Nursing and the Boston College Office of University Communications.
Address letters and comments to: csonalum@bc.edu
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Spring 2025
2 Pinnacle lecturer addresses AI in health care. Faculty lead a new center at MGH on dementia dyadic interventions and co-author guidelines on cardiovascular disease risk management. FeatUres
4 Addressing the maternal health crisis through midwifery
The Connell School launches a new master’s program devoted to the ancient science—and modern necessity—of midwifery.
8 Do the right thing BC faculty empower nursing students to deliver ethical, patient-centered care.
12 The future of nursing science Connell School graduates discuss the vital—and growing—need for Ph.D.prepared nurse scientists.
achieVements
16 Publications Summaries of select faculty research published in the Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, and Journal of Pediatric Nursing
17 Faculty presentations Roundups of faculty research presented at the American Public Health Association, American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and Eastern Nursing Research Society annual meetings.
IMAGE CREDITS Cover and left, Caitlin Cunningham. Above, clockwise from top left: Caitlin Cunningham, Caitlin Cunningham, iStock/Alisa Aleksandrova/Shutterstock/Sasha Kondr/Christine Hunt, iStock/IR_Stone/Christine Hunt
Alumni and Students
Gaelyn Grant ’27, a Connell School undergraduate research fellow working with Associate Professor of the Practice Aimee Milliken, presented a poster and a presentation at the National Nursing Ethics Conference in Los Angeles in March.
Chizoba Nwosu ’05 received an Excellence Award at the New England Regional Black Nurses Association’s February award ceremony. Nwosu is associate chief nurse of Academic Affiliations, Operations, and NP Residencies at VA Boston Healthcare System.
Cheryl Slater, D.N.P. ’26, was awarded a first-place research prize for her poster “Improvement of Nurses and Neonatologists’ Knowledge and Expertise of the Neonatal Withdrawal Assessment Scale (NWAS) Tool” at the Eastern Nursing Research Society conference in Philadelphia. Her faculty mentor was Assistant Professor of the Practice Catherine Conahan.
Lyann Tam ’25 was part of the BC Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society’s delegation to COP29, the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024.
Community
The spring Pinnacle lecture featured nurse scientist Patricia Dykes and a discussion of nursing involvement in the development of AI for health care, and how health informatics is changing the field. Dykes is a Harvard Medical School professor and research program director in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice. She was the Dr. Maureen P. McCausland Keynote Speaker.
Nancy Gaden, M.S. ’87, received the Dean Rita P. Kelleher Award for alumni achievement at CSON’s Pinning Ceremony in May. Gaden is senior vice president and chief nursing officer at Boston Medical Center.
#1 Master of nursing program in New England
In its 2025 Best Nursing Programs survey, U.S. News & World Report ranked the Connell School’s doctor of nursing practice 14th out of 158 and the master’s degree 26th out of 146 schools.
Associate Dean Diana Bowser, Assistant Professor of the Practice Catherine Conahan, and CSON students attended the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum in January.
Professor Ann Burgess was featured on the Nurse.com podcast season finale to discuss psychiatric nursing, criminal psychology, and assessing and treating survivors of trauma and abuse.
Dean Katherine E. Gregory was elected to serve a two-year term on the American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s Nominating Committee.
Barry Family/Goldman Sachs Endowed Professor Christopher Lee co-authored an important guideline detailing how to manage cardiovascular disease risk before, during, and after noncardiac surgery. The joint guideline was released by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, and endorsed by seven other medical societies.
Assistant Professor Wonkyung Jung received a CSON Innovation Grant for her project “SAFE AI (Synergistic Approach to Fall-risk Evaluation in Older Adults Using Generative Artificial Intelligence) Phase I.”
Professor Karen Lyons is the behavioral intervention development core co-leader of CONFIDE-ADRD, a new center at Massachusetts General Hospital that aims to develop, optimize, test, and implement dementia dyadic interventions to improve health and prevent negative outcomes.
As a Gerontological Society of America Board Member, Professor Karen Lyons advocated for NIH funding on Capitol Hill in March, meeting with congressional staffers for Rep. Robert Aderholt (AL), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Rep. Tim Walberg (MI), and Sen. Ron Wyden (OR).
The Schiller Institute named Professor Karen Lyons and Assistant Professor Brittney van de Water as two of 22 BC faculty members to join its inaugural cohort of affiliate faculty.
In November, Associate Professor of the Practice Aimee Milliken spoke at the inaugural Nursing Ethics Conference hosted by Boston Medical Center. Her lecture, “Nursing Ethics in Everyday Practice,” focused on cultivating moral community as a mechanism for addressing moral distress.
Nurses’ Health Study 3 (NHS3) interviewed Associate Professor of the Practice Melissa Pérez Capotosto about her scientific research and how she is using NHS3 data to answer pressing public health questions and improve clinical outcomes.
Assistant Professor Melissa Uveges received an American Heart Association Implementation Science Award for her project “An Implementation Strategy Bundle to Enhance Adoption of Pediatric Familial Hypercholesterolemia (FH) Screening.”
Retired faculty member Judith Vessey was named a Living Legend in Massachusetts Nursing by the American Nurses Association Massachusetts in April.
credits: Lee Pellegrini (above), Peter Julian (right)
ADDRESSING THE MATERNAL HEALTH CRISIS THROUGH Midw ifery
by Kara basKin
photography by caitlin cUnningham
The Connell School launches a new master’s program devoted to the ancient science—and modern necessity— of midwifery.
For millennia and across cultures, midwives provided care to women in labor and throughout their reproductive years with a universal emphasis on providing compassionate treatment.
Today, however, maternal health in the United States is in crisis. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income countries. Even in Massachusetts, a state known for top-notch health care, maternal mortality nearly doubled from 2011 to 2020, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
To address this problem, Boston College’s Connell School of Nursing (CSON) launched a two-year, in-person graduate nurse-midwifery program in May 2025, the only program of its kind in eastern Massachusetts. Building on CSON’s tradition of academic excellence, the program educates students to provide the full scope of care for their patients, from adolescence throughout the lifespan, and care for newborns in the first month.
a time - honored tradition at a tipping point
“Midwifery is an ancient profession. You’ll find midwives in the Bible and throughout history. These are women who were trained on the job, attending other women in their community or in their families. There’s a long history of midwifery in the United States, including among enslaved Black women in the South,” says Katharine Hutchinson, Dr.P.H., CNM, director for both the nurse-midwifery and women’s health programs at CSON.
In the country’s early years, new midwives traditionally apprenticed under experienced ones, traveling together to women’s homes to care for mothers and babies in need. They combined clinical acumen during delivery with straightforward nutritional advice, psychological support, and mentorship that respected the emotional nature of labor and the intense postpartum period.
Hutchinson, a full-time faculty member at CSON and a staff midwife at Boston Medical Center, will lead the new midwifery program in the spirit of this tradition. She says the program marks a turning point for women’s health care.
“The United States faces a crisis,” she explains. “Over the past decades, we’ve seen more U.S. counties with zero obstetric care providers: no obstetrician, no midwife, no family medicine doctor trained in delivery, or no hospital available. Even in Massachusetts, there are many areas where people have to drive more than an hour to access reproductive health care.”
boston college william f. connell school of nursing
Midwifery care is associated with lower morbidity and mortality among mothers and newborns, fewer preterm births and low birthweight infants, and reduced interventions in labor. And, in other industrialized nations with better maternal health, midwives are commonplace: they provide uncomplicated, non-emergency obstetric and gynecological services for women across the reproductive years and play a crucial role in preserving women’s health during labor.
“The data points to midwifery as a really sustainable, costeffective solution,” adds Thamarah Crevecoeur ’06, Dr.P.H., CNM, an associate professor of the practice and a certified nurse-midwife at Boston Medical Center. “In other developed countries in Europe, midwives are basic to the maternal health care system. Beneficial midwifery outcomes are very clear.”
However, with the rise in U.S. obstetric medicine in the 1800s, the holistic role of midwives became less commonplace. Currently, they tend to just 12 percent of U.S. births. But this might change soon. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy signed an August 2024 maternal health care bill, expanding access to midwifery, among other health care options, for pregnant patients. In October 2024, Massachusetts awarded $1 million to increase community birth centers.
community outreach through an equitable lens
The new CSON curriculum will offer 16 courses centered on whole-person care across the lifespan. Hutchinson emphasizes the new program’s important focus on providing uniformly excellent care for all, which means addressing perinatal inequities: Black and Indigenous women have an estimated three to four times the risk of dying in pregnancy, childbirth, or the first year postpartum compared with their white peers—and compared with other modern countries.
“So many areas of U.S. medicine have a long history of racism,” she explains. “Midwifery is no different, and midwifery as a profession needs to be aware of and work toward a more just future within our field. We know that there are troubling, distressing differences in outcomes for our patients. How are we working to overcome those and moving to a future where all patients receive equitable, safe, evidence-based, loving care? Our courses ensure that students have the scientific underpinnings and academic preparation to serve as nurse-midwives while also ensuring that they are knowledgeable about disparities in care and outcomes.”
Additionally, CSON received a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for the Birthworker Equity in Education (BEE) Collaborative. This interdisciplinary effort with BC’s School of Social Work and Mattapan Community Health Center supports health care workers who specialize in perinatal and neonatal care to improve pregnancy and birth outcomes.
caring for the whole woman
One reason for improved outcomes lies in midwifery’s holistic, preventive approach. Consider anemia: pregnant women are often iron-deficient. Instead of looking for a purely medical solution, midwives will focus on optimizing diet and educating women on ways to improve iron absorption through proper nutrition. This way, a woman ultimately might avoid the need for a blood transfusion or risk running low on breastmilk.
“We focus on ways to prevent the problems that can occur later, in a health system that doesn’t always make that easy,” Hutchinson explains.
Midwives also play a stabilizing role in women’s overall well-being. This is especially important when caring for patients who face systemic disadvantages or barriers to accessing health care, or feel unseen by their providers, and thus are less likely to seek proper care or follow-up appointments.
“Midwifery care is really the vanguard and leader of the patient-centered movement. We partner with our patients so they feel cared for and loved during some of their most vulnerable moments…”
◀ Katharine Hutchinson, Dr.P.H., CNM
“It’s of course important that you survive childbirth,” Hutchinson says. “But midwives see a bigger picture than that. We want to ensure that you’re taken care of by people who deeply respect you, your autonomy, and your choices, and who will make sure that you don’t feel traumatized by the experience. Midwifery care is really the vanguard and leader of the patient-centered movement. We partner with our patients so they feel cared for and loved during some of their most vulnerable moments, which leads to better outcomes.”
Midwives frequently also offer group prenatal care, which unites women with common symptoms and gestational ages in larger sessions, fueling camaraderie and allowing midwives to have a wider reach while building community.
“Rather than having the same 10-minute conversation 15 times with different people, group prenatal care brings together pregnant patients around the same gestational age who create a sense of community,” Hutchinson explains. “The midwife attends to help answer questions, but a lot of the value of the group comes from the participants really getting to know each other and helping each other. That part feels really rewarding as a health care provider: getting to know your patients and seeing them in their community.”
Facilitating this, Crevecoeur, who works at Mattapan Community Health Center, will oversee internships with students to fulfill clinical hours. She also has high praise for CSON’s history of placing students in service trips for hands-on learning—one of her nursing students recently traveled to Jamaica—and job placement.
“I’m excited to have more midwives on the ground, simply so that more people have access. And, as a former BC student myself, I’m proud that the CSON and BEE Collaborative is the space where all kinds of birth workers can come together,” she says.
Ultimately, Hutchinson and Crevecoeur believe the new program marries moment with mission: an essential initiative delivered from the right place, at the right time, with a community focus.
“The Jesuit mission fits so nicely with what midwives do: caring for the whole person. It’s not just looking at the pathology of pregnant patients, but really trying to optimize the outcomes for them, their families, and their communities,” Hutchinson adds. “The power of midwifery is life-changing. Midwives are what our world needs today. As we say: peace on earth begins with birth.” ▪
Learn more about the M.S. in Nurse-Midwifery
Thamarah Crevecoeur
BC faculty empower nursing students to deliver ethical, patient-centered care.
by tim gower
The oncology nursing staff faced a critical dilemma. A 70-year-old woman with advanced cancer was declining rapidly and unable to communicate. Her nurses strongly believed that her care should shift to comfort-focused measures. However, her oncologist disagreed, persuading the woman’s family that “she’s a fighter” and should receive immunotherapy. The nursing team believed that continued treatment was tantamount to torture, but felt helpless to stop it.
Aimee Milliken often presents this case study (a composite of several patient stories) when she addresses groups of nurses and aims to get them thinking and talking about the types of ethical challenges they face in their own practices. “When I present that case, I’ll ask, ‘Is this familiar?’ And the response is always a lot of head nodding,” says Milliken, an associate professor of the practice at the Connell School of Nursing (CSON).
Milliken is one of several CSON faculty who are continuing a long tradition of helping students learn and implement the principles of nursing ethics. Together with Assistant Professor Melissa Uveges and Assistant Professor of the Practice Richard Ross, S.J., Milliken teaches a graduate course called Nursing Ethics and Professional Responsibility in Advanced Practice, which is focused on preparing advanced practice nurses for ethics leadership in health care. Moreover, “components of ethics are interwoven throughout the nursing courses,” says Milliken. “As a school within Boston College, CSON places a huge emphasis on social justice and
recognizing that, as nurses, we have obligations to our communities.” In the classroom and through their research, these professors provide nurses with the tools and strategies they need to ensure patients receive ethical care.
Following a code
The American Nurses Association (ANA) established the first official nursing code of ethics in 1950, and has revised it every decade since. Milliken, who obtained a Ph.D. in nursing at BC in 2017, was a member of the writing panel that last updated the code, released in February 2025. In a 2018 paper, she spelled out the four major ethical principles that should guide every interaction a nurse has with a patient:
• autonomy, or the right to self-determination
• non-maleficence, or avoiding or minimizing harm
• beneficence, or the promotion of good
• justice, or the fair and equal distribution of benefits and burdens
Tools for ethical nursing
Students in CSON’s graduate ethics course learn frameworks that nurses can apply to resolve ethical challenges in patient care, such as FESOR. This framework was introduced in a Home Healthcare Nurse article co-authored by Martha Jurchak, Ph.D. ’96, who was the former director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Ethics Service and Milliken’s mentor there.
F acts Gather all relevant factual information about the patient and the ethical issue.
E thics Questions Frame your question using ethical language.
S takeholders ............ Seek input from all parties affected by the decision, including family members and the interprofessional health care team.
O ptions ..................... Brainstorm about options to address the ethical issue.
R ecommendation .... Based on the data obtained, make a recommendation to address the problem.
Students come to the class with varying degrees of clinical experience but are in need of practice navigating the kinds of ethical challenges they’ve already confronted. “It’s an opportunity to pressure test everything you know,” says Milliken. “We try to provide frameworks for how to think about ethical issues.” In a typical class, students are presented an ethics case and the class discusses how it should be managed.
Chris Charles, D.N.P. ’26, a nurse supervisor and clinical ethics consultant at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, valued the opportunity to work through cases in an academic setting. “Prof. Milliken would flip the script and push us by asking, ‘Why do you think that way?’ She encouraged us to think through a case as ethicists.”
Students also choose case studies from their own practices or the literature for analysis. “Some of their cases are so compelling that they’re worthy of a broader readership, and we have been able to help students get them published,” says Uveges, who co-authored a paper with Jessica Grasch, D.N.P. ’26, that will appear in the journal AACN Advanced Critical Care this year. In it, they examined ethical considerations for nurses when a pregnant patient is suspected to have colorectal cancer. Meanwhile, Charles and Milliken co-authored a 2024 paper in Nursing Ethics in which they argued that COVID-19 vaccine mandates for nurses were justified by the ANA code of ethics. The paper was presented by Charles at the International Philosophy of Nursing Conference in Australia last fall.
Building trust
Milliken and Uveges have made significant contributions to the field of nursing ethics outside their teaching at CSON. Milliken developed the Ethical Awareness Scale, a tool used in research and in clinical settings to measure how well nurses recognize and understand ethical issues in their daily work. Uveges is conducting research with colleagues at Boston Children’s Hospital with the goal of developing strategies that clinicians can use in conversations with families to promote children receiving testing for hereditary high cholesterol.
Both have co-authored widely used essential texts with CSON Associate Professor Emerita Pamela Grace, a highly respected figure in the field of nursing ethics. Milliken partnered with Grace on Clinical Ethics Handbook for Nurses (Springer, 2022), while Uveges joined her to co-author the fourth edition of Nursing Ethics and Professional Responsibility in Advanced Practice (Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2023), for which she contributed a new chapter with Associate Professor and rare disease expert Andrew Dwyer on the ethics of genetic testing across the lifespan.
Polls have long shown nurses to be the most-trusted professionals in the United States, but if that trust is to be sustained against the growing mistrust of the health care system, nurses must maintain the highest ethical standards. “It’s important right now for nurses to understand their ethical responsibilities at the bedside,” says Uveges. “Only then will we know how to move forward in a way that provides the best care possible.” ▪
Melissa Uveges
Chris Charles
THE FUTURE OF NURSING SCIENCE
Connell School of Nursing graduates discuss the vital— and growing—need for Ph.D.prepared nurse scientists.
by deVon halliday
Ph.D.-prepared nurses serve as researchers, educators, and leaders, driving innovations that improve patient care and shape the future of the field. These experts play a crucial role in conducting research that creates the evidence for practice, influencing health policies, and, perhaps most importantly, educating and mentoring the next generation of nurses and scientists. “Investing in Ph.D. nursing programs is not just about academic achievement,” says Connell School Dean Katherine E. Gregory, “it’s about ensuring that nursing continues to evolve and meet the ever-growing challenges of modern health care.”
Gregory believes that supporting and training nurse scientists is critical. “We need a scientifically robust body of knowledge to guide nursing practice,” she says, “and that knowledge comes from nurses with Ph.D.s.”
A wide range of research opportunities are available to Ph.D.-prepared nurses. Thanks to their clinical knowledge and ability to conduct research, they work in a variety of settings: clinical environments, academia, public policy, biotech, and the startup industry, to name a few. “Nurse scientists are skilled in conducting research that will yield new findings that are ultimately translated to the bedside,” Gregory says.
She is particularly keen to see more nursing Ph.D. students bring their skills and experience to academic roles. “There’s no greater impact than educating the next generation of nurses and scientists, not only in the classroom but also in the research arena,” she says. “The students you teach and mentor will practice around the world, and your training will ripple outward.”
» BUILDING THE TOOLBOX Ph.D. candidate Jordan Keels
As an undergraduate, Jordan Keels studied biology and nursing and, after graduation, chose to pursue a nursing Ph.D. “I wanted to create my own research, put forth my own ideas, ask my own questions,” she says.
Today as a Ph.D. candidate, Keels studies diabetes and works closely with her mentor, Associate Professor Andrew Dwyer, a rare-disease researcher in endocrinology. In weekly meetings, Dwyer helps Keels shape research questions, and introduces her to colleagues and other faculty who help her develop new skills. In addition to supporting her current work, Dwyer is preparing Keels for future projects, and he asks questions during their discussions to guide her: What are your goals? What kind of career do you want to have? What skills do you want to leave this program with? He also gives Keels opportunities to practice the
skills she’ll eventually need for her own research. “He’s instrumental in setting up the ladder to help me succeed,” Keels said.
Keels was awarded an NIH grant in September 2024 for her dissertation research, which is an epidemiological study of diabetes risk among adults with COVID-19. She started conducting research in January alongside her clinical practice as a clinical research nurse practitioner at Massachusetts General Hospital. She says she is grateful for all the resources CSON has provided, from monthly seminars to sessions on grant writing and CVs.
“We get a very personalized education,” Keels says. “That’s what has helped to propel me forward.”
photo
Hunt (left), Caitlin Cunningham (right)
» ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS Chair of Pediatric Nursing Martha A. Q. Curley
Martha A. Q. Curley, Ph.D. ’97, RN, FAAN, is the Ruth M. Colket Endowed Chair in Pediatric Nursing at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor in nursing at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing. She says she sees an urgent need for nurse scientists in the field.
“We need expert clinicians who have good clinical questions, focused on what nurses actually do,” Curley says. “Nurses create the experience of care. They help patients and families live with disease and disability. And we need nursing science to support them.”
That need for support in the field set Curley on her path toward research. As a clinical nurse specialist in the multidisciplinary intensive care unit at Boston Children’s Hospital, she looked for existing research that could give her the best available evidence to inform her practice. “I started asking: How best should nurses care for a patient on this treatment? How best to take care of parents under a lot of stress? I had questions that weren’t addressed anywhere in the literature.” Boston College was right down the road, so Curley applied to the CSON Ph.D. program.
She was able to attend BC thanks to a fellowship, and she believes providing both financial and academic support to aspiring nurse scientists is crucial. “Schools of nursing should invest in faculty that can serve as mentors for Ph.D.-prepared nurses,” she says. “You can’t embody the identity of a nurse scientist unless you have role models.
“I was fortunate enough to study with the best and brightest in the field,” she continues. “Boston College had a stellar reputation for research, with faculty who were really making an impact.”
Curley graduated in three years, began applying for NIH grants, and quickly acquired funding for her first clinical trial. “And then I just kept going,” she says. “Bigger studies, larger populations, more clinical sites.”
Curley is now running two large clinical trials. She is the principal investigator on one that involves 50 sites, including international sites, testing to determine the best way to position critically ill children (supine or prone) and to ventilate them (standard or high-frequency). Her other trial is a cohort study of 750 kids who have received treatment in a pediatric intensive care unit. Curley and her team are mapping out “post-intensive care syndrome,” with the aim of providing resources and continued care to patients and their families after they leave the ICU.
“Nursing science is important—not just for nurses, but fundamentally, critically important for patients and families,” Curley says. Without nurse scientists to answer research questions, important inquiries about patient care will remain unanswered from a nursing perspective or will rely on data from other disciplines. “We need to be able to partner with our interdisciplinary colleagues,” she says. “When everybody brings their best work forward, patients and families will receive the best possible care.” ▪
Full list of faculty output
Pilot Study Looks at How to Manage Patients with Palliative Care Needs and Substance Use Disorder
Palliative care clinicians face unique challenges when providing care for patients with cancer-related pain and concurrent substance use disorder (SUD), including a gap in knowledge, abilities, and skills regarding patient management. Assistant Professor of the Practice Sarah Given and her co-researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute developed a team approach called the Complex Pain Board (CPB) to address this gap. They created a forum in which clinicians could discuss patients with concurrent SUD and/or psychosocial complexity and receive feedback from an interdisciplinary team to help them come up with an actionable plan of care. CPB participants included palliative care clinicians and specialists in social work, oncology, interventional pain, psychology, patient and family relations, and addiction medicine. For the pilot study, presented at the 2024 Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care, Given and her co-researchers looked at feasibility (whether there were sufficient cases) and acceptability (if attendees were likely to continue coming to meetings) of the CPB. They found both, with 28 cases presented through the CPB and 95% of attendees saying they were likely or highly likely to continue going to CPB meetings.
Personalized Approach Helps Assisted Living Staff Improve Quality of Life for Older Adults with Cognitive Impairment
Associate Professor of the Practice Beth McNutt-Clarke served as the faculty mentor for a quality improvement project team, comprising Molly Abate , D.N.P. ’26, Courtney Mulvaney ’19, D.N.P. ’25, and Nadia Polad, M.Ed. ’06, D.N.P. ’25, that presented at the 37th Annual Scientific Sessions of the Eastern Nursing Research Society Conference in April. The project focused on developing tools to help the staff of an assisted living facility offer residents with cognitive impairment care that prioritizes their quality of life
and improves their feelings of well-being. In addition to conducting Quality of Life-Alzheimer’s Disease (QoL-AD) and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) interviews with the residents, the students developed and provided staff with updated report sheets for shift handoff, a QoL-focused binder, and a communications sheet, all personalized for each resident. The team found that the specialized QoL-oriented tools helped staff better understand residents’ needs and comfort in assessing QoL—highlighting the importance of policy changes that would reduce barriers to implementing such tools. They also found that shorter, simpler, and more objective QoL tools were helpful for assessing older adults with cognitive impairment.
Public Health and Peace Work as a Primary Prevention to War
During the Peace Caucus panel at the 2024 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting, Shelley K. White , associate professor of the practice and director of experiential learning, spoke about the need for public health professionals to advance conditions for peace that are based in assuring social and structural determinants of health. The Peace Caucus works with APHA to promote peace and prevent war as baseline conditions for the public’s health, highlighting the intersections of militarism, war, social justice, and conflict. White, a founder of the caucus’s Public Health Working Group on Primary Prevention of War, shared a competency framework the group created for understanding militarism within society and expanding peace advocacy and research skills. White says that while peace work and anti-war activism are connected, they are not the same—and that it’s incumbent on public health professionals to focus on promoting peace work.
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