Board of Visitors Approves New Endowed Professors of Nursing
Three new endowed professors—Jeanne Alhusen, Randy Jones, and Virginia LeBaron—have been appointed by the UVA Board of Visitors at its June 2022 meeting. At its previous meeting in winter 2021, the Board approved the appointment of Dominique Tobbell as the Centennial Distinguished Professor of Nursing.
Jeanne Alhusen, UVA Medical Center Professor of Nursing
An often-applauded nurse scientist, mentor, and a practicing family nurse practitioner, Alhusen—associate dean for research—studies the impact that mothers’ mental health exerts on early childhood outcomes, especially for families living in poverty.
Part of more than $8 million in currently funded grants, Alhusen’s research was the first to demonstrate, on a population-based level, the effects of violence during pregnancy on an infant’s risk of being born small-for-gestational age, and her research is included in the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force’s recommendations on screening for intimate partner violence as well as its guidelines to prevent perinatal depression. Alhusen earned a $2.1 million NICHD/NIH grant in 2021 to study the experiences of women with disabilities, including the impact COVID-19, psychosocial stress, intimate partner violence, unintended pregnancy, and access to reproductive and family planning care has on their health and the health and development of their children.
Alhusen is an AWHONN board member, a Women’s Initiative board member, was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, oversees the School’s summer undergraduate internship program, and mentors doctoral students.
Randy Jones, the Jeanette Lancaster Alumni Professor of Nursing
A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholar alumnus, Jones—associate dean for partner development and engagement, and assistant director for community outreach and engagement at the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center—studies health disparities, health equity, prostate cancer, chronic illness, and decision making.
Most recently, he earned a $2.2 million NIH grant to develop a novel decision making tool to guide men with advanced prostate cancer through treatment and avoid decisional regret. Jones has also earned funding from the American Cancer Society, the American Nurses Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and speaks to audiences around the country about the importance of treatment decision making tools and of encouraging family members to be part of the process, especially for communities of color.
Elected to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s 37-member National Cancer Policy Forum in 2020 and chosen as an advisor for the American Academy of Nursing’s Institute for Nursing Leadership in 2019, Jones was invited to be the 2020 National Institute of Nursing Research director’s lecturer, named the Southern Nursing Research Society’s Researcher of the Year in Minority Health, the National Black Nurses Association’s Institute of Excellence Scholar, and has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing since 2012.
Virginia LeBaron, the Kluge-Schakat Professor in Compassionate Care
The 2021 recipient of a $3.4 million NIH grant to create a personalized, in-home approach to monitoring, managing, and predicting cancer pain using environmental sensors and wearable devices, Virginia LeBaron, an associate professor of nursing, has been named the Kluge-Schakat Professor in Compassionate Care.
A palliative care nurse practitioner interested in the use of technology to alleviate cancer pain, LeBaron’s nursing career has focused on adult oncology and palliative care. Since 2004, she’s studied cancer control and pain relief in global environments, including India and Nepal, as well as rural domestic environments, including Southwestern Virginia.
A Fulbright Scholar alumna, American Cancer Society pre-doctoral fellow, and a fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, LeBaron is a published poet and the author of Cardinal Marks (Finishing Line Press: 2021) and a 2022 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow for her non-fiction book about her ethnographic research in India.
Dominique Tobbell, the Centennial Distinguished Professor of Nursing
Centennial Distinguished Professor and the Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry Director Dominique Tobbell's scholarship focuses on the complex political, economic, and social relationships that developed after World War II between universities, governments, and the healthcare industry that continue to impact modern-day systems. She is the author of Pills, Power, and Policy: The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and its Consequences (University of California Press: 2012), and Health Informatics at Minnesota: The First Fifty Years (Tasora Books: 2015). Her forthcoming book, Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing (University of Chicago Press), examines American nurses’ more expansive roles in the post-World War II era.
Tobbell teaches a variety of courses on the history of 20th century American healthcare, with an emphasis on the ways that race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability determine Americans’ experiences with and access to healthcare.
A board member of the American Association for the History of Nursing, Tobbell has earned fellowships from the Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, UVA’s Miller Center, the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center, and the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy.
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