Voice magazine Fall 2020

Dean Gennaro to step down in June; CSON in the age of COVID-19; events with health care leaders on topics from structural racism to lessons learned during COVID-19, faculty, students, and alumni awarded grants and honors.

Pictured: Physician and epidemiologist Camara Phyllis Jones and CSON Associate Professor Allyssa Harris at the Zoom discussion, “Tools for Becoming a Racial Justice Warrior.”

Associate Professor Karen Lyons discusses her research on how “care partners”—her term for an adult with a chronic or life-limiting illness and his or her family caregiver, usually a spouse—can benefit from the shared experience and reduce discord and worsened health.

Eight students in the inaugural Doctor of Nursing Practice cohort are aiming to invent pandemic-era nursing. The students—who are advanced practice nurses—apply existing research findings and their clinical and classroom experience to an evidence-based “practice change project” dedicated to improving health care outcomes.

The five researchers who joined the Connell School faculty this fall share an interest in the social determinants of health: how outside factors from access to information to economic disparity affect the way that bodies process illness. These new faculty members work in areas that range from communication about cancer among young adults to the best ways to talk about genetic indicators of health, and from health disparities among immigrants to high-risk pregnancies.