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Nursing leaders win big at research conference
SNRS winners

From left: Eun-Ok Im, Jessica Wells, Kate Yeager

Four Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing faculty members are Southern Nursing Research Society (SNRS) award winners. During the SNRS Annual Conference Awards Luncheon held on February 24 in New Orleans, the women were honored.

Professor Eun-Ok Im, PhD, MPH, RN, CNS, FAAN, is the 2021 SNRS Distinguished Researcher Awardee. The purpose of the SNRS Distinguished Researcher Award is to recognize the contribution of an individual whose established program of research has enhanced the science and practice of nursing in the southern region.

Im is currently the Senior Associate Dean for Research and Innovation and Edith Folsom Honeycutt Endowed Chair at Emory University. Im's most outstanding contribution to nursing is a research program that adopts Internet and computer technologies to eliminate gender and ethnic disparities. She has taken the lead in this burgeoning field, and her current studies are among the first of their kind to use these technologies to build nursing knowledge. She has also gained national and international recognition as a methodologist and theorist in international cross-cultural women's health through more than 400 papers, abstracts, and chapters (about 220 refereed journal articles) and about 400 international and national multi-disciplinary presentations. Im has been on more than 50 research review panels of the NIH and was a reviewer for the PCORI and the American Heart Association.

Assistant Professor Jessica Wells, RN, PhD, WHNP-BC is the 2022 Southern Nursing Research Society Research in Minority Health Awardee. Wells' overarching focus is cancer control and prevention in HIV-infected and vulnerable populations. She recently completed a K01 Career Development Award where she examined individual, interpersonal, and neighborhood factors of adherence to follow-up after an abnormal anal Pap test in HIV-infected individuals. Her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, and Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society.

Associate Professor Kate Yeager, RN, PhD, FAAN, received 2022 the Research in Nursing Health Authorship Award. As a nurse clinician and researcher, Yeager works to improve the quality of life for individuals with chronic diseases. In addition, she focuses on understanding and eliminating health disparities. Her research program seeks to examine and improve the symptom and treatment experience for individuals with cancer, specifically targeting pain and treatment adherence. This includes qualitative work with African Americans with cancer to explore their experience with managing symptoms.

Assistant Professor Glenna Brewster, PhD, RN, FNP-BC was selected as the 2022 Rising Investigator by the Aging/Gero Southern Nursing Research Society Research Interest Group. Professor Brewster is also a Family Nurse Practitioner in the Integrated Memory Care Clinic. Her research program aims to understand sleep disturbance experienced by persons living with cognitive impairment and their caregivers, develop behavioral interventions to address the identified sleep disturbance, and examine the impact of these sleep interventions on psychological, cognitive, and physiological outcomes.

Postdoctoral fellow Zahra A. Barandouzi’s also received an SNRS research grant. The grant application entitled "Gut Microbiome Associations with Psychoneurological Symptoms in Women with Gynecologic Cancers" has been selected for the SNRS 2021 Research Grant award. Barandouzi, the principal investigator (PI) of this study is mentored by Deborah Watkins Bruner.


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