'Change Agent' Gomes Lauded With U Penn Nursing Alumni Social Justice Award

Associate dean Melissa Gomes earned U Penn Nursing Alumni 2025 Social Justice and Health Equity Award

Whether counseling patients via telehealth each Tuesday, encircling alumni formerly excluded during segregation, or teaching fellow faculty what holistic admissions processes and microaggressions really look like, Melissa Gomes’s frank warmth marks her every encounter.  

An active psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, associate professor, and the School’s associate dean for strategic wellness and opportunity, a funded scholar, AACN Leadership Institute alumna, and winner of the Virginia Nurses Association’s 2024 VNF Nurse Researcher Award, earlier this spring, Gomes earned another accolade: winner of the University of Pennsylvania’s 2025 Penn Nursing Alumni Social Justice and Health Equity Award. 

“Melissa’s ability to authentically engage with others is her great strength. She teaches her students and colleagues that, even across difference, there is more that unites than divides us. This award is testament to that.”  

Marianne Baernholdt, the Pew Charitable Trusts Dean and pProfessor

The U Penn Nursing Alumni award recognizes a graduate for exceptional contributions to the nursing profession who are “committed] to addressing social determinants of health and how they impact patients’ well-being.” 

“Her life’s work evidences a staunch commitment to social justice and health equity,” Gomes’s nominator, Bridgette M. Rice, an associate dean and professor at Villanova University, wrote. “[She] understands the importance of multilevel strategies to mitigate health inequities . . . [understands how to] foster a sense of community and belonging among underrepresented students . . . [while contributing] to the body of nursing science.” 

Described as a “change agent” whose “innate understanding” powerfully fuels her line of teaching, inquiry, and care, Gomes’ career has taken her from underserved, urban healthcare clinics to the helm of school-based initiatives using proven mental health and social justice approaches to dramatically reduce school suspension rates among adolescents, improve student behavior and academic performance, and reduce the likelihood that students drop out—work she did in Hampton Public Schools that provided a model to other Virginia schools. Since her appointment at UVA in 2023, Gomes has developed and deployed novel programming (a biannual Nursing and Medicine Community Festival, common reads, regular "fireside chats," and a Double Take Storytelling event), pilot modules for students and faculty (Building Empathy and holistic admissions modules), positioned the School for accolades (including UVA being twice honored as a “Best School for Men in Nursing” by the AAMN), and provided support for nursing students to engage, build community, and have fun. 

“Melissa’s ability to authentically engage with others is her great strength,” said Marianne Baernholdt, the Pew Charitable Trusts Dean. “She teaches her students and colleagues that, even across difference, there is more that unites than divides us. This award is testament to that.”  

Prior to her tenure at UVA, Gomes was an associate professor and interim chair of graduate studies at Hampton University School of Nursing. Gomes’s NIH-, NINR-, and NCI-funded research has focused on youth and intimate partner violence, Black teenagers’ attitudes and beliefs about HIV/AIDS, and analyses of the genetic variants in African American women with breast cancer. 

Gomes has taught at Hampton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Old Dominion University, and VCU schools of nursing, and practiced at South Baltimore Family Health Center, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, Bon Secours Hampton Roads Health System, and Portsmouth-based Churchland Psychiatric Associates. 

Inducted into the American Academy of Nursing in 2021, Gomes is also a Distinguished Fellow in the National Academies of Practice and its nursing academy, a two-time Hampton-Penn Scholar, served on the American Academy of Nursing’s psychiatric expert panel and currently chairs its health equity expert panel. 

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