HIV Faculty Collaborative

The HIV Faculty Collaborative is comprised of the Dean of the Rutgers College of Nursing and faculty who conduct research related to HIV. Below, you can read about the program of HIV research of each Collaborative member.

Lucille Eller, Associate Professor
Bill Holzemer, Dean and Professor
Jeffrey Kwong, Clinical Assistant Professor
Teri Lindgren, Assistant Professor
Dean Wantland, Assistant Professor
Suzanne Willard, Clinical Associate Professor

Lucille Eller, Associate Professor
Dr. Eller has been a Principal Investigator with the UCSF International Nursing Network for HIV/AIDS Research for the past 10 years, collaborating on four international studies that included the development and testing of symptom management strategies in HIV/AIDS. She was the Clinical Director of the Rutgers training site for the NY/NJ AIDS Education and Training Center, funded by HRSA, for which she developed and delivered an educational curriculum for RNs in the state of New Jersey caring for individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Dr. Eller is Principal Investigator on an NCI R21 randomized clinical trial studying symptom management in prostate cancer. She is Co-Principal Investigator on an NIGMS R01 testing the effects of a mentoring intervention on perceived self-efficacy for research in undergraduate and first-year master’s students.

Bill Holzemer, Dean and Professor
Dr. Holzemer is Chair of the UCSF International Nursing Network for HIV/AIDS Research. Prior to coming to Rutgers, he was a Professor in the Department of Community Health Systems (CHS), and Associate Dean for International Programs at the UCSF School of Nursing. He served six years as Department Chair, CHS, and five years as Associate Dean for Research. He was the Director of the UCSF World Health Organization Collaborating Center, Co-Director of the International Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Clinical Training in Nursing. He served six years as a chartered member and chair of an AIDS National Institutes of Health study section. He has published more than 100 refereed data-based research articles, edited six books, and authored thirteen book chapters. Dr. Holzemer is a member of the Institute of Medicine, a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and a member of the Japan Academy of Nursing. He is a former Fulbright Scholar (Egypt), a Project HOPE Fellow (USA-Mexico Border), and is a Visiting Professor at St. Luke’s College of Nursing, Tokyo, Japan. He has lectured widely on HIV/AIDS in many countries of the world.

Dr. Holzemer’s research has examined quality of nursing education and nursing care, patient outcomes, variation in nursing practice, self-care symptom management, and quality of life, and for the last 25 years he has focused on people living with HIV. Research on quality of care has included the measurement of phenomena of interest to nurse clinicians and researchers such as quality of life, functional status, and symptoms. His work on the quality of nursing care has focused on the development and psychometric testing of several scales of potential interest to nurse clinicians and researchers, including The Adolescent & Pediatric Pain Assessment Tool, The Living with HIV Scale, The Engagement Scale, and The Revised Sign & Symptom Checklist for HIV.  He directed a P20 research center on Health Disparities in HIV/AIDS, linking faculty from the schools of nursing at the University of Puerto Rico and UCSF in research. He directed a four-year clinical trial that tested a nurse-delivered intervention tailored to the client’s learning needs designed to improve adherence to antiretroviral medications for AIDS patients. Dr. Holzemer completed a collaborative project in Southern Africa on self and family care symptom management for people living with HIV/AIDS in Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, and Swaziland, supported by Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Secure the Future Foundation. Dr. Holzemer was PI on a research project supported by the Fogarty International Center, NIH focusing on HIV/AIDS stigma in Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland, and Tanzania. He directed a NIH funded  training program from 1995 to 2008 titled HIV/AIDS Nursing Care and Prevention.

Jeffrey Kwong, Clinical Assistant Professor 
Dr. Kwong has worked with HIV-infected patients for 12 years in Denver and in Boston. Prior to recently returning to the East coast, he was an Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease at the University of Colorado in Denver (UCD). Dr. Kwong currently provides primary and specialty care for persons living with HIV. He also assisted with various quality improvement programs and has coordinated a  HIV/Hepatitis Co-Infection Program. He also implemented and coordinated an anal dysplasia program at UCD. 

Teri Lindgren, Assistant Professor
Dr. Lindgren is a community health specialist who brings a strong global health focus to her teaching and research. Dr. Lindgren has qualitative research expertise as well as experience with focus groups, mixed qualitative and quantitative methods and cluster analysis. She conducts research with refugee and immigrant communities in the United States and internationally, most recently focusing on HIV issues. She currently is exploring how Malawi Christian and Muslim religious leaders’ messages about HIV impact members’ HIV stigma, risk behaviors and caring for people living with HIV. Dr. Lindgren completed two postdoctoral fellowships (T32 award) in HIV and symptom management.  

Dean Wantland, Assistant Professor
Dr. Wantland's work in HIV has focused primarily with urban, disadvantaged populations in San Francisco,  New York City, and Newark, New Jersey. The focus of these community research activities has been to improve the selfcare and prevention activities to reduce disparities in care and improve health outcomes for individuals living with HIV. Prior and ongoing research projects have focused on the development, testing, and use of web-based and non web-based study methods and interventions for HIV symptom self-management and patient outcome improvement in symptom frequency and intensity, adherence, and quality of life.  Relevant work includes the development and testing of a website that is focused on web-based interactive applications, allowing patients to enter and access their inputted information. This interactive symptom management website was reviewed by health care professionals and PLWH.  Additionally, while at Columbia University School of Nursing, he received an NIH grant to develop and test the feasibility of using video podcasted applications of tailored symptom self-management strategies for people living with HIV/AIDS. Working as part of the International HIV Nursing Research Network, he was project manager for two behavioral studies assessing symptoms and symptom self care for HIV positive individuals in multiple clinics. He also developed and implemented databases and Web-based clinical data entry and quantitative data analytical tools used in two international research studies in eleven countries. Dr. Wantland also conducted qualitative interviews with military health care providers regarding their own and their patient’s participation in shared decision making in breast cancer treatment for the Department of Defense TRICARE Management Activity. He also conducted structured interviews and developed a comparative assessment process for the Department of Defense and Veterans Administration’s pilot disability evaluation system for wounded veterans comparing participant satisfaction with the present and revised disability evaluation processes.

Suzanne Willard, Clinical Associate Professor
Dr. Willard has been involved in the field of HIV for over 20 years. As direct care provider, she initiated clinic services for parents of children who were receiving care at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children.  In this role she participated in NIH sponsored research studies and explored a variety of avenues to insure that women and their families receive the array of services that are required for healthy outcomes.  She initiated a clinical program in an academic OB/GYN practice at Temple University Hospital providing HIV consultative services at the same time that the women received their OB care.  This program has been replicated throughout the City of Philadelphia and has resulted in a dramatic decrease in perinatal transmission of HIV disease to children.   She replicated these efforts at Drexel University College of Medicine, where she also held an appointment in the College of Nursing–Graduate program. At the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, the largest international organization providing services to pregnant women with HIV, she designed and established programming in Sub-Saharan Africa to insure the quality of care utilizing a framework of continuous quality improvement. As a consultant, she has worked with a variety of HIV programs including the Pennsylvania Mid-Atlantic AIDS Education and Training Center.  Most of the consultative work included reviewing systems of care and making recommendations that would insure that HIV positive women receive the services that they needed as well as developing and leading the City of Philadelphia’s efforts to establish a robust quality improvement program for all Ryan White Funded HIV services. In 1994, she initiated and chaired the Perinatal Review Program which utilized data to make recommendations to improve services for pregnant women with HIV in the Philadelphia region. She has provided consultative services and has been to many governmental commissions including the Mayor’s Commission on HIV/AIDS and advisory panels to government officials as well as the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Willard was the first nurse to be selected to be a panel member of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adult and Adolescents. In this role, she was a key advocate for guidelines that are illustrative of care of women and adherence and inclusive for the variety of care providers, including advance practice nurses, who provide care to individuals living with HIV. These Guidelines are the gold standard for treatment both in the US as well as globally. Her research has looked at adherence, issues of abuse and exercise and their impact on HIV positive women. She has been a site director of the International HIV/AIDS Nursing Research team.  As an educator, she designed academic HIV/AIDS courses for graduate and undergraduate students, and she has presented nationally and internationally.  She is a mentor to many individuals nationally and internationally to insure that individuals living with HIV get services that are of the highest quality. She has published book chapters and in peer-reviewed journals and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. As an advocate for nurses globally, she is President-elect of the Nurses in AIDS Care. In this role, she will continue to focus on insuring that nurses, who are the primary care providers internationally, have the resources and knowledge in the fight to eradicate AIDS. She has received many honors for her work and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

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