Fall - University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

Dr. Rosalyn Watts, Professor
Emerita of Nursing at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Nursing joined
the Advisory Board in 2006.
Grants
Dr. Julie Fairman received a prestigious
Investigator Award Grant from
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
for a three year study entitled Practice
Politics: History of Nursing 1975 to
the Present. Dr. Fairman uses the nurse
practitioner movement to explore the
public and private forces propelling the
specialization of nursing in the U.S.
Her project takes a comprehensive
look at nurse practitioners and their
role in health care delivery – their
aspirations for professional growth
and autonomy, their education and professional
certification, state regulation,
reimbursement for their services, federal
and philanthropic funding for nursing
education, and the influences of nurse
specialty organizations and the American
Nurses Association. Her work will
reveal how the nursing profession has
helped shape the American health care
system as it responded to the need and
demand for health care services while
also promoting its own political and economic
self-interests.
Center Associate Directors Patricia D’Antonio (left)
and Barbra Mann Wall Photo: Ira Joel Sartorius
Dr. Patricia D’Antonio recently
completed a three year National Library
of Medicine grant for a study entitled
Nursing in the US: A History of People
and Places’ which examined the work
of nurses in hospitals and as members of
geographically, ethnically, racially diverse
families and communities.
In 2008, Dr. D’Antonio received a
National Endowment for the Humanities
Faculty Fellowship to complete her upcoming
work, American Nursing: Neighborhood
Work and National Mission.
This support will allow her to complete a
book that will be the first major re-thinking
of nursing’s history since the seminal
works of the 1980s. Dr. D’Antonio’s research
situates nurses and nursing within
families and communities as well as
within hospitals and health care agencies.
This award recognizes the importance of
Dr. D’Antonio’s prior historiographical
and data based research. It allows her to
continue to explore how nursing helped
women and some men, including those
of color and different ethnic and religious
backgrounds, construct consequential
personal as well as professional lives.
In 2007, Dr. Barbra Mann Wall received
a University of Pennsylvania Research
Foundation grant for her study, A
Comparative History of Catholic Hospitals
in the Twentieth Century. This award
allowed her to lay the methodological
groundwork that extends the analysis of
her first book, Unlikely Entrepreneurs:
Catholic Sisters and the Hospital Marketplace,
1865-1925, into the 20 th century.
Dr. Wall’s long-term goal is to complete
a full-length book manuscript that
will examine the problem of how Catholic
hospitals were and are simultaneously
religious and secular institutions.
Dr. Wall has also received the Trustees’
Council of Penn Women Faculty
Summer Research Fellowship in support
of her study, Clash and Compromise:
Women, Gender, and Reproductive Services
in Catholic Hospitals, 1960-2000.
This research focuses on the history of
hospitals from 1925 to 2000 through the
lens of religious nursing congregations,
with special reference to how Catholic
sisters balanced their mission to serve
the poor with the need to comply with
church teachings on women’s reproductive
issues.
Dr. Wall received a 2008 Fichter
Research Award from the Association for
the Sociology of Religion and an H-15
Grant Historical Research Award from
the American Association for the History
of Nursing for her proposal, Clash and
Compromise: Catholic Hospitals, Secularization,
and the State in 20 th Century
America. This study continues her work
on Catholic hospitals.
Dr. Julie Solchaski was awarded
a grant to carry out the 2008 National
Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NS-
SRN). The NSSRN is completed every
four years and is the most comprehensive
enumeration of nurses in the United
States. Dr. Sochalski is also a Co-Investigator
on a five year National Institute
of Health grant entitled Health Related
Quality of Life: Elders in Long-Term
Care
Dr. Jean Whelan continues work on
two National Library of Medicine grants.
The first grant entitled Never Enough:
Nurse Supply and Demand, 1900-1965
examines how professional nurses organized
their work and analyzes the
relationship between professional nurses’
working conditions and supply and demand
problems related to the delivery
of nursing care between 1900-1965. Dr.
Whelan is also a Co-Investigator on a
second National Library of Medicine
grant, Nursing, History and Healthcare:
A Website, which will result in the creation
of a website that will document,
analyze and place in historical context
the most compelling and controversial
political and social issues influencing the
provision of nursing care and connect
them to relevant policy implications
Dr. Karen Buhler-Wilkerson is Co-
Investigator on the National Library of
Medicine grant Nursing, History and
Healthcare: A Website (see above).
Doctoral student Jonathan Gilbride
is completing a T-32 Pre-doctoral fellowship
through the Center for Health Policy
and Research Outcomes. The title of Mr.
Gilbride’s doctoral study is Nurses’ Involvement
in Health Policy: The Clinton
Health Plan.
Doctoral student J. Margo Brooks
Carthon received a Ruth L. Kirschstein
National Research Service Pre-Doctoral
Fellowship Award from the Agency for
Health Care Research and Quality for her
proposal. We Will Not Be Moved:
The Black Church Health Movement.
To support her studies, recent
graduate, Dr. Jennifer Hobbs received a
Department of Veterans Affairs Pre-Doc-
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