Nursing PhD Faculty

Drawing on 20 years of practice as a nurse-midwife, Dr. Karen Trister Grace’s research interests are in reproductive coercion, intimate partner violence (IPV), pregnancy intention and health disparities. Dr. Grace recently conducted research addressing solutions to housing instability for IPV survivors, as well as a mixed methods study exploring reproductive coercion in Latina women. She has an interest in birth outcomes related to IPV and reproductive coercion, and the intersection with unintended pregnancy. Dr. Grace is the lead editor of the 3rd edition of the “Prenatal & Postnatal Care: A Person-Centered Approach” textbook.

Dr. Marti Kubik has an 18-year history of extramural-funded research with a focus on youth and families and low-income and minority populations. Nationally recognized in the field of childhood obesity prevention, Dr. Kubik’s work has advanced understanding of the school food environment, contributing to school nutrition policy at state, national and international levels. Other research examined the role of school nursing in obesity prevention. New work piloted a trauma-informed, resilience-based multi-level intervention to reduce violence among urban youth. She has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is a past standing member of the NIH Community-Level Health Promotion Study Section.

Dr. Suyoung Kwon’s research focuses on occupational health nursing, with a particular emphasis on preventing work-related disability and addressing employment challenges faced by people with disabilities. She has conducted studies on musculoskeletal disorders among workers in both the manufacturing and healthcare sectors, examining ergonomic exposures and the psychosocial work environment. Additionally, she has explored employment challenges through the lens of social determinants of health. Drawing on her experience as an occupational health nurse, ergonomist, industrial hygienist, and congressional policy fellow, she explores how the interplay between the work environment, labor market, and health policies shapes workers' health.

Dr. Erin Maughan's research focuses on measuring the effectiveness of school nursing and school health programs that support the need of students (K-12) living in vulnerable situations. Her particular research focus looks at the infrastructure needed to support appropriate school nurse staffing and identifying indicators that best measure the effectiveness of school nursing and school health. Dr. Maughan uses her professional work experience and expertise in mix-method and qualitative designs to not only strengthen the evidence related to school health, but also obtain the data needed to change health and education policy.

Dr. Kyeung Mi Oh’s research focuses on racial and ethnic disparities in public health, health literacy, cancer screening, and smoking cessation. She has done extensive research on culture-specific influences on health behaviors, tobacco use, cancer information seeking, and cancer screening participation among ethnic minorities, particularly Korean American (KA)s. In her past research, she has worked closely with churches, senior resource centers, and community organizations for KAs and gained valuable skills, knowledge, and experience in conducting community-based health research. She recently conducted a smoking cessation intervention study for Chinese and Korean immigrants.

Kat Scafide, tenured Nursing professor and forensic nurse, researches tech-driven, equitable injury ID and documentation, especially for patients of color.

Dr. Teenu Xavier’s research focuses on using artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance healthcare communication and improve patient outcomes, with a special focus on identifying and reducing biased language in electronic health records. She examines EHR text-based data to uncover meaningful patterns, language features, and contextual cues that can shape the care patients receive. Her work also explores the use of natural language processing in a variety of sources, including clinical notes, social media, and blogs, to study sentiments, emotions, and health-related conversations, with a commitment to addressing health disparities. Drawing on her expertise in nursing informatics, big data analytics, health promotion and health equity, she investigates how Artificial intelligence can be integrated into healthcare systems to support empathetic, patient-centered documentation and address social determinants of health