Rutgers School of Nursing Magazine - Summer 2024

Charlotte Thomas-Hawkins, PhD, RN, FAAN, associate dean and associate professor of nursing science, has been examining the impact of workplace racism on the well-being of hospital-based nurses. “Nurses of color reported multiple types of microaggressions, more negative racial climates, higher levels of emotional dis- tress, increased job dissatisfaction, and more intent to leave,” she explains. She and her coauthors, includ- ing School of Nursing Dean and Professor Linda Flynn, PhD, RN, FAAN, called the combination of race, COVID worries, and workplace racism “a dual pandemic” in the journal Behavioral Health, receiving signifi- cant media coverage. Thomas-Hawkins’ early work focused on the effects of long-term hemodialysis. “My nephrology workforce research has been influential in changing federal outpatient dialysis policy,” she notes. Flynn also collaborated on this study, which revealed better patient outcomes when RNs oversaw dialysis versus LPNs — and the government actually listened. As head of the nursing science division, which includes CHESR, she feels privileged to be in a position to encourage more nurse- scientists, as they can spot systemic inequities and assess the impact of mitigations. “Nurses’ health equity and health systems research should continue to challenge and question the structures that have negative impacts on the health and well-being of individuals and populations,” she says. Haiqun Lin, MD, PhD, professor and director of CHESR, is a co-PI on a R33 grant from the NIH’s National Institute of Aging. “This study involves machine-learning predictions of elements like cognitive and place-of-care trajectories during the last years of life,” she says. Her work uses data analytics to address health service utilization and risk factors for chronic disease. This involves many information vectors, including surveys, clinical assessments, insurance claims, and electronic health records. But analytics alone can’t reveal the full picture, Lin notes. Researchers must examine factors like how the data was collected and the health of study participants. Through her work, she discovered that clinical factors influence only about 10 to 30 percent of the modifiable contributors for healthy outcomes. Social risk plays a bigger role, including race, insurance status, and cultural values. “Addressing equity is critical to improving population health,” Lin says. “Collaborating with nurse-scientists on this is very meaningful,” she adds. “I feel honored to contribute to finding the causes of health care disparities, an important step toward developing policies or interventions to eliminate them.” Every five years, experts from Europe, the U.S., and the Pan Pacific confer to revise the clinical practice guidelines for pressure injuries. For the 2025 edition, one of the 15 representatives is from Rutgers: Jill Cox, PhD, RN, APN-c, CWOCN, FAAN, clinical professor of nursing science. “It’s a dedicated group with a shared pas- sion,” she says. “Prior to this, I served on the board of directors for the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel for six years. It’s all been part of my jour- ney to make an impact, not only regionally and nationally, but now globally.” Inspiring Policies and Challenging Inequities RESEARCHERS SPOTLIGHT Biostatistics and Population Research Pressure Injury Risk Detection and Prevention in A Hospital Setting Read about some of the groundbreaking research to fall under the new Center for Health Equity and Systems Research (CHESR)