THE FUTURE OF NURSING RESEARCH Shannon Zenk, an alumna of UIC Nursing who spent 14 years on faculty, is the new director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, NIH's arm for nursing science. When Shannon Zenk, PhD, MS ’99, MPH, FAAN, was an early-career nurse, she worked in home healthcare near the Twin Cities, caring for patients after they returned from the hospital. Though only there about a year, the experience left an impression that would later drive her research career. “What really struck me was how people’s living conditions made such a powerful impact on their health, both in terms of the privilege that some people had as well as the deprivation or poverty that other people faced,” she said.
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College of Nursing
Zenk began studying neighborhood conditions as they relate to health. Her pioneering work on food deserts drew national attention to the problem of inadequate access to healthy foods in low-income and Black neighborhoods. At only mid-career, she’s been extraordinarily productive, with more than 107 journal papers, almost 7,000 citations, and $50 million (past or current) in extramural grant funding to her name. Now, she’ll have an opportunity to shape the direction of nursing research for the entire nation. As only the third permanent director of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) since it became an institute in 1993,
