School of Nursing happenings

Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing faculty, students and scholars continually participate in lectures, speaker series, symposiums and other special events that reflect the school's vision and mission to transform health care through nursing education and research. This frequently updated list is a sample of the breadth of such activities.

2013 Happenings

May 7, 2013 – School of Nursing professor speaks at a UC Davis Health System Cinco de Mayo celebration

May 4-7, 2013 – School of Nursing doctoral candidate presents at the American Telemedicine Association conference
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing doctoral candidate Sheridan Miyamoto participated as a panelist in two American Telemedicine Association Annual International Meeting sessions. The first panel discussion, “Integration of mHealth Technologies,” focused on guiding principles and the elements for success in establishing a new or expanding telehealth program. The second panel discussion, “Subspecialist use of telemedicine,” focused on her study,“Evaluation of Telehealth to Support Pediatric Sexual Abuse Examinations in Rural Communities.” Miyamoto, a grant project manager at the School of Nursing, conducts research aimed at helping diabetic patients living in rural areas to adopt healthy behaviors and improve their health using telehealth communications. The American Telemedicine Association is a nonprofit organization whose members advocate promoting access to medical care via telecommunications technology.

April 19, 2013 – Doctoral candidate meets with Karuk Tribe’s Youth Leadership Council

April 15-19, 2013 – School of Nursing assistant adjunct professor and student speaks with teens regarding mental health
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing Assistant Adjunct Professor Jann Murray-Garcia and doctoral-student Ellen Goldstein meet with students at Arthur A. Benjamin Health Professions High School during mental health awareness week. The school coordinated several workshops and discussions to raise awareness of mental health issues on campus, including examining mental illness, the effects of stigma on the mentally ill and how students can recognize symptoms in themselves and others and get help. Goldstein, a marriage and family therapist who specializes in assisting people heal from the effects of trauma, discusses the emotional impact of culture and trauma on Mentlal Health Awareness Day April 16. Murray-Garcia, a pediatrician, focuses her lunch-time session on anti-bullying Thursday, April 18. Arthur A. Benjamin Health Professions High School offers students the opportunity to experience many health-care careers while still in high school.

April 8-9, 2013 – Postdoctoral fellow represents UC Davis at Congressional Lobby Day
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing Postdoctoral Fellow Michelle Fennessy was selected by the American Heart Association to participate at Congressional Lobby Day in Washington, D.C. as advocacy ambassador for the Cardiovascular and Stroke Nursing Council. On behalf of the American Heart Association’s You’re the Cure on the Hill Lobby Day, Fennessy partnered with heart disease and stroke survivors to inform members of congress of the impact of the federal sequester on research and future research funding. Lobby Day is the American Heart Association’s premier annual advocacy event and brings their volunteers, survivors and staff together to advance the organization’s public policy priorities. The focus this year was on protecting funding for the National Institute of Health’s heart and stroke research, and garnering support for the Million Hearts Initiative, which hopes to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes over the next five years.

April 8, 2013 – Postdoctoral scholar publishes article in Lung Cancer
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing Postdoctoral Fellow Hermine Poghosyan published the article “Health-related quality of life after surgical treatment in patients with non-small cell lung cancer: A systematic review” in Lung Cancer. Surgery is the best available treatment to enhance long-term survival after non-small cell lung cancer. The study reviewed the literature regarding health-related quality of life after surgical treatment for non-small cell lung cancer. Poghosyan found new interventions focused on smoking cessation, improving symptom control and physical function are needed to enhance health-related quality of life. Lung Cancer is an international publication covering the clinical, translational and basic science of cancer in the lung and chest regions. The article was also featured on MDLinx.com/pulmonology, a site which collects medical articles and research from over a thousand peer-reviewed journals and media. Read the abstract here.

April 5, 2013 – Students present at Interdisciplinary Graduate and Professional Student Symposium
Several School of Nursing students presented as part of UC Davis’ Interdisciplinary Graduate and Professional Student Symposium. The symposium showcases the research of graduate and professional school students for UC Davis scholars and the wider community. Doctoral candidate Lisa Martinez participated in a panel session about the interdisciplinary research project Niños Sanos, Familia Sana, which involves a multifaceted behavioral intervention to address obesity among Mexican-origin families in the rural Central Valley. Master’s-degree students Kelley Ceccon and Sarina Fazio presented the project, “Developing a Care Coordination Screening Tool for Transitioning Patients with Chronic Diseases Back to Usual Care” and were awarded the Dean’s Prize for Best Oral Presentation in Nursing. Master’s-degree student Kathy Speegle-Clark presented her research, “Violence in the Workplace: A Prevention Program for Health Care.” Doctoral candidate Susan Perez won the Provost’s Prize for Best Student Organized Session for a speed-mentoring session designed to help graduate students find mentors across disciplines in an efficient manner. Associate Dean for Academics Deborah Ward served as a judge during the symposium.

March 22, 2013 – Nursing professor recognized as teacher of the year at annual informatics conference
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis Associate Adjunct Professor Alberto Odor was named the Professor of the Year at the 7^th annual UC Davis Health Informatics conference. The Professor of the Year award is chosen each year by Informatics students. Odor teaches both nursing and informatics courses at UC Davis. Additionally, Associate Vice Chancellor for Nursing and founding Dean Heather M. Young gave a keynote address, “Informatics Everywhere: Core Knowledge for all Health-Care Professionals.” The conference is designed for health-care professionals of all backgrounds including nurses, physicians, pharmacists, technologists and others whose scope of practice is related to health informatics. The theme of the 2013 conference was “workforce education in informatics” and presentations focused on informatics educational approaches.

March 21-24, 2013 – UC Davis schools of health faculty lead workshops for high-school health leaders
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing Assistant Adjunct Professor Jann Murray-Garcia and representatives from the UC Davis School of Medicine and the Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant Programs conduct leadership workshops at the State Leadership Conference for Cal-HOSA, an organization for high-school student leaders preparing for careers in the health-care industry. Workshop topics range from “My Journey to Becoming a Physician” and “Medical School Admissions Selection Criteria” to “Cultural Humility and the Pre-Health Professions Student” and “Family Medicine.” The four-day Sacramento conference attracts students from across the state. Cal-HOSA is chartered by the California Department of Education and endorsed as an essential component of health sciences education.

March 19, 2013 – Postdoctoral scholar selected for Professors for the Future program
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing Postdoctoral Fellow Tasha Peart was selected for the 2013-14 UC Davis Professors for the Future program. The program, sponsored by UC Davis’ Office of Graduate Studies, is a year-long competitive fellowship program designed to recognize and develop the leadership skills of outstanding graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who have demonstrated their commitment to professionalism, integrity and academic service. Fellows participate in trainings and complete a project designed to enhance the graduate or postdoctoral experience and professional development of their colleagues

March 12, 2013 – Dean Young delivers keynote lecture at Integrating Quality Symposium
Associate Vice Chancellor for Nursing and Dean Heather M. Young provided the keynote address, “Person-Centered Care Coordination: Promoting Quality” at the third annual Integrating Quality Symposium at UC Davis Health System. The annual Integrating Quality Symposium: Linking Clinical and Educational Excellence first launched in 2011. The symposium was developed as an opportunity for the health system community to share best practices and innovations in quality initiatives that include trainees and students, or that integrate into undergraduate, graduate or life-long learning programs with a vision to create a pathway to a culture of quality at academic health centers. Several School of Nursing graduate students gave poster presentations as part of the 2013 event.

March 11, 2013 – Interprofessional research team receives dean’s award
The leaders of the Interprofessional Collaborative Incident Response Team (I-CIRT) project were honored with a Dean’s Team Award of Excellence in Education at a UC Davis Health System Vice Chancellor/Dean’s Recognition Awards ceremony. The I-CIRT leadership team is made up of nearly 20 health-care professionals, clinicians and administrators, including faculty, staff, alumni and students from the School of Nursing. The team is piloting the research project Implementing a Collaborative Incident Response Team to Foster Patient Safety and Reduce Medical Liability, which focuses on improving hospital response to unfavorable clinical incidents or errors through the use of a trained, interprofessional team to assist frontline health-care staff. The project is led by Associate Professor of Pediatrics JoAnne Natale, who is a member of the Nursing Science and Health-Care Leadership Graduate Group.

March 7-8, 2013 – Doctoral candidate presents at Health IT for the Underserved Conference
Katherine Kim, a doctoral candidate at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, gave two presentations at the Health IT for the Underserved Conference in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. On March 7, she gave the talk “iN Touch: Impact of and Lessons Learned from an mHealth Intervention for Overweight and Obese Youth,” as part of the session Empowering Youth to Self-Manage Chronic Diseases through Mobile Tracking Applications. On March 8 she gave the presentation “Health Information Exchange Training and Toolkit for a California Model e-Health Communities Program,” as part of the closing session on Health Information Exchanges. The conference is organized by the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved, an interdisciplinary group of clinicians, advocates and health-care organizations that provide care for the underserved.

February 2013 – UC Davis nursing leader selected to governor’s Let’s Get Healthy California work group
Associate Vice Chancellor for Nursing and Dean Heather M. Young was recently named to a work group of the Let’s Get Healthy California Task Force, led by state Secretary Diana S. Dooley, who also leads the California Health and Human Services Agency. Charged with developing a 10-year plan for improving the health of Californians, the task force includes work groups for each of six goals. Young works with a variety of experts to establish priorities for goal No. 4: Redesigning the Health System: Efficient, Safe and Patient-Centered Care.

February 2013 – Heather Young named chief scientist for CITRIS
Heather M. Young, associate vice chancellor for nursing and dean of the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis, was recently named chief scientist for the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). As chief scientist, Young is a member of the CITRIS leadership team. CITRIS was formed in 2001 when University of California researchers determined that many opportunities lay beyond developing new and innovative technologies in the application of those technologies. Its mission is to create information technology solutions for the most pressing social, environmental and health-care problems.

February 14, 2013 – Doctoral candidate named to federal health information technology sub-committee
Katherine Kim, a doctoral candidate at the School of Nursing, was named to the Consumer Empowerment Workgroup, a new sub-committee of the federal Health IT Policy Committee. The committee makes recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health IT on a policy framework for the development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure.  The workgroup makes recommendations on policies and opportunities to strengthen consumers’, patients’ and lay caregivers’ ability to manage health and health care for themselves or others.

February 6, 2013 - School of Nursing faculty and students participate in mentoring program with local high school
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing faculty and students volunteered their time at Heart 2 Heart Mentor Morning to provide guidance and support to 20 local high school students. The event, which included breakfast and informational interviews, is part of a pilot program at Arthur A. Benjamin Health Professions High School of Sacramento, Calif., that provides students with mentoring from health-care professionals. Assistant Adjunct Professor Jann Murray-Garcia recruited School of Nursing volunteers and mentored students at the event, along with Professor Mary Lou de Leon Siantz, three doctoral students, two master’s- degree students and one alumna.  Mentors from the School of Nursing will continue to provide guidance and feedback through March as the students draft their senior project outlines.

January 2013 - School of Nursing doctoral candidate selected for diabetes research committee
The American Association of Diabetes Educators invited Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing doctoral candidate Deborah A. Greenwood to serve on the organization’s research committee during 2013. The duties of committee members include discussing grants and research as well as defining and using patient outcomes data. Research committee members also serve on the advisory panel for a project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to disseminate information to members of the American Association of Diabetes Educators regarding patient-centered outcomes research through podcasts and written summaries.

January 24, 2013 - School of Nursing doctoral candidate presents at American Federation of Medical Research meeting
Sheridan Miyamoto, a doctoral candidate at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, gave the presentation “Evaluation of telehealth to support pediatric sexual abuse examinations in rural communities” at the American Federation of Medical Research 2013 Western Regional Meeting in Carmel, Calif. The study evaluates the effectiveness of conducting telehealth consultations with rural examiners to complete a thorough sexual abuse examination. The American Federation of Medical Research improves health by fostering research in health-related disciplines through public policy and educational programs.

January 2013 - School of Nursing scholars co-author article in Journal of Emergency Nursing
Three School of Nursing scholars co-authored the article “Implementing clinical research in the high acuity setting of the emergency department,” in the January 2013 issue of the Journal of Emergency Nursing. Frances Patmon, a doctoral candidate; Michelle Fennessy, a postdoctoral scholar; and Daphene Francis, a doctoral student, are all co-authors of the article. The study identifies obstacles related to conducting research in an emergency department setting and outlines solutions to improve emergency department research methods with the goal of improving emergency care. The article’s first author is Holli A. DeVon, associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing. Click here to read the article.

January 2013 – School of Nursing faculty, staff publish article in The Journal of Rural Health
An interprofessional group of scholars from UC Davis Health System published the article “Recruiting rural participants for a telehealth intervention on diabetes self-management,” in the winter 2013 issue of The Journal of Rural Health. The study evaluated a specific approach to recruiting rural and undeserved participants from multiple locations to take part in behavioral health research. The recruitment approach involves using site coordinators from rural clinics to recruit study participants. Sheridan Miyamoto, a doctoral candidate and grant project manager at the School of Nursing, is the first author. The co-authors are Stuart Henderson, associate director of the Clinical and Translational Science Center; Heather M. Young, associate vice chancellor and dean of the School of Nursing; Deborah Ward, the school’s associate dean for academics, and Vanessa Santillan, a junior research specialist at the school. Read the article here.

January 2013 – School of Nursing graduate leads her hospital through primary stroke certification process
Therese Frank, a graduate of The Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis, led Sutter Solano Medical Center to successful certification as a Primary Stroke Center. The certification indicates the hospital is superior in recognizing and treating stroke patients. To receive the certification, hospitals must undergo rigorous on-site stroke care procedure reviews by The Joint Commission, a non-profit organization that accredits and certifies health-care organizations across the country. As the hospital’s stroke coordinator, Frank collaborated with colleagues to lead the hospital through the certification process. She is also working to create a community outreach program designed to promote stroke detection education.

Past Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing Happenings
2012 Happenings 
2009-2011 Happenings