Throughout my varied professional and academic career, I have focused on health promotion and health education, especially at the community/population level, with a particular interest in global health. My qualitative dissertation explored the impact of women’s community participation on a large Afghan refugee population in California. My experience in qualitative research led to a life changing collaboration with a UCSF faculty to explore, through a mixed-methods, NIH funded study, how faith-based organizations engage with their communities in HIV prevention and care in Malawi, a heavily impacted country in Southern Africa. This experience brought into focus a new area of interest, the intersection of community structures, such as faith-based organizations, people living with HIV and health promotion, which continues to guide my scholarship interest. For the last 15 years I have been an active member/investigator with the International Nursing Network for HIV/AIDS Research, a network comprised of nurse researchers globally who have implemented 7 multi-site, multi-national studies related to HIV symptom management, self-care, health literacy and physical activity, and who have collaboratively authored over 50 publications including a randomized controlled trial of a self-care symptom management manual. As an expert in qualitative research, I collaborated with faculty colleagues at Rutgers University and UCSF in designing, conducting, and analyzing qualitative.
As faculty I have experience teaching at all levels of nursing education and in global affairs: undergraduate, masters, PhD, and DNP. I have had the pleasure of leading 6 PhD students (5 nursing and one from the Division of Global Affairs) through their dissertation process covering diverse topics and roles, including school nurses, administrative supervisors, charge nurses, Russian immigrants, clinical nurse researchers, Islamophobia, and human sex trafficking, and assisted in the publication of their wonderful studies. Since returning to UCSF, I have likewise been lucky to lead 3 DNP students through their Evidenced Based Improvement Projects covering diverse topics including clozapine use algorithm, using accelerated diagnostic tools (HEART score) in clinical decision making, systemic and historic trauma in minority populations. I enjoy working with students, learning as I help them complete their vision for their work and I am lucky to now be working with DNP students as they seek to implement and evaluate their health care improvement projects.