Each year the Heilbrunn Family Center for Research Nursing at Rockefeller University supports five nurses pursuing independent research projects that will make significant contributions to the field of nursing. The nurses are selected from around the country for one or two year awards that provide a maximum of $25,000. Patricia Eckhardt, director of the Heilbrunn Center, said the competition was intense this year but she feels they have picked five exemplary nurses who will be studying topics ranging from patient self-advocacy to eating behaviors and obesity.
The award funding comes from an endowment established by sisters Helaine Lerner and Joan Rechnitz in honor of their parents Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn. All of the recipients of the award are decided on by a committee of internationally recognized nurse scientists, and the applicants are all submitted by doctoral and postdoctoral nurses across the country. The Heilbrunn Center has been funding the awards for four years in a row now. The Rockefeller University Hospital was the first hospital in the country devoted exclusively to medical research, the hospital in combination with the Heilbrunn Center are both key components of Rockefeller’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science.
Meet the 2016 Recipients:
Teresa L. Hagan – Dr. Hagan is a postdoctoral research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on how women with a history of cancer advocate for their health needs and well-being.
Paule Joseph – Dr. Joseph is a clinical and translation postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Nursing Research’s (NINR) Digestive Disorders Unit, Biobehavioral Branch. She plans to study predictive models of how brain-gut interactions underlie human eating behavior and obesity.
Krista Knudson – Ms. Knudson is a doctoral candidate at Yale University. Her research involves an interest in how individuals and families experience illnesses requiring extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a complex rescue treatment for severe but potentially reversible heart or lung failure.
Melissa Kurtz – Ms. Kurtz is a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Her research study will explore factors that influence decision-making for neonatal intensive-care unit patients, including perceptions of being a “good parent.”
Kristen R. Weaver – Ms. Weaver is conducting dissertation research in the Digestive Disorders Unit, Biobehavioral Branch, of NINR’s Intramural Research Program through a graduate partnership program between New York University and the NINR. Her dissertation research will examine brain-gut axis dysregulation in patients with irritable bowel system (IBS) with an exploratory investigation for markers of stress.
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