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Nurse Faculty Scholar Robert Atkins is exploring how adolescents in high-poverty, urban neighborhoods promote, maintain and restore their health. He hopes to use the knowledge he gains to identify ways to reduce health disparities and unequal access to health care in vulnerable adolescent populations. Atkins is an assistant professor at the College of Nursing at Rutgers.

Conducting a first of its kind clinical trial, the University of Virginia’s Kathryn Laughon is using her Nurse Faculty Scholar grant to test a computerized program that creates a personalized safety plan for battered women. Intimate partner violence is a significant public health burden for society, and although safety planning is critical to domestic violence intervention, its effectiveness has not previously been analyzed.

Nurse Faculty Scholar Jacquelyn Taylor of Yale University is examining the interaction between genetic and social factors related to high blood pressure to understand control and prevention of hypertension in African American children. “Nursing interventions that focus on gene-environment aspects of chronic disease could decrease the prevalence and improve qualify of life among patients at risk for high blood pressure,” Taylor says.

Indiana University’s Diane Von Ah’s Nurse Faculty Scholar award is supporting her research to help breast cancer survivors improve their memory. Women commonly experience memory problems after breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, and health care providers know little about how to treat it. Von Ah hopes memory training, similar to that used in healthy older people, can help improve their quality of life.