The American Association of Retired Persons recognized five nurses for their work to end health disparities and improve healthcare.
The AARP Center for Health Equity Through Nursing and the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action initiative helped sponsor the Equity-Minded Nurse Awards. The awards honor nurses who promoted health equity through nursing practice, research, education or leadership.
Here are the five 2024 award recipients and their work:
Wei-Ti Chen, PhD, RN, UCLA School of Nursing (Los Angeles): Dr. Chen developed tools to improve healthcare and quality of life for underserved groups, such as people with HIV/AIDs, Tourette Syndrome and mobile populations. She is one of the first nurse scientists to conduct HIV intervention research with Asians both in the U.S. and in Asia.
Selena Gilles, DNP, New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing (New York City): Dr. Giles is a prelicensure nursing education expert who has researched the value of including reproductive justice in nursing curricula, the role of nurses in educating patients about opioid overdose harm prevention and using community-based models to increase vaccination rates in marginalized communities.
Sabrina Jamal-Eddine, PhD, RN, University of Illinois, Chicago: Dr. Jamal-Eddine's research explored the use of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism and disability justice in healthcare. Her long-term goal is to found an interdisciplinary, applied public-humanities, community-engaged healthcare equity center in a university.
Robert Lucero, PhD, RN, UCLA School of Nursing (Los Angeles): Dr. Lucero's research focused on improving health outcomes of vulnerable populations, such as older adults and LGBTQ+ populations, using innovative health systems and informatic approaches. His research is informing development for data-driven knowledge generation that can be used to improve quality of care for hospitalized older adults.
M. Rebecca O’Connor, PhD, RN, University of Washington School of Nursing (Seattle): Dr. O'Connor's research focuses on addressing bias in nursing. She collaboratively designed and led a program to develop bias-interrupting habits in future nurses. She also provides bias training to health science students, faculty and research teams.