Research & Scholarship Virtual Grand Rounds Series

A recognized authority on mobilizing individuals to engage in physical activities that reduce stress and promote good health – particularly within minority populations – Dr. Karen D’Alonzo is an Associate Professor at the Rutgers University School of Nursing.  She also is the founding Director of the School’s Center for Community Health Partnerships (CCHP).

The CCHP identifies and disseminates information about best practices in community-based participatory research (CBPR) among other units at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Services and across Rutgers University at large. Dr. D’Alonzo and her colleagues recently completed Project PESO (People Engaged at Stopping Obesity), a study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development that constitutes a major step in establishing community engagement and CBPR as priorities at Rutgers.

Cheryl Holly is a professor, senior methodologist, and co-director of the Northeast Institute for Evidence Synthesis and Translation (NEST) at Rutgers School of Nursing. She holds a joint appointment in the School of Public Health (Department of Epidemiology) and New Jersey Medical School (Department of Preventive Medicine and Community).\

Dr. Holly earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at Pace University. Her master’s degree in nursing, with a concentration in adult health and physical illness, was earned at Columbia University, as was her doctorate in education, with an emphasis on research and evaluation in curriculum and teaching. She is a fellow of the Academy of Nursing Education and a fellow and distinguished scholar of the National Academies of Practice.

Since 2013, Dr. Nelson has been the Director of the AIDS Education & Training Center National Coordinating Resource Center at the SON FXB Center. He is also the PI of the Improving Sexually Transmitted Infection Screening and Treatment among People Living with or at Risk for HIV (STI SPNS) project. On this project, Dr. Nelson works with a Rutgers team along with 9 clinical demonstrations sites and 3 Convener sites. This HRSA HIV/AIDS Bureau and Bureau of Primary Health Care funded study evaluated the integration and implementation of evidence-based interventions into primary HIV care clinics to increase routine STI screening, testing, and treatment. Having provided clinical HIV care for 24 years and now working with healthcare clinicians providing HIV-related care across the US, Dr. Nelson is well versed on the workforce challenges and successes in providing HIV-related care in the US. 

An applied social psychologist with expertise in interventions for health-promotion, Dr. Leluțiu-Weinberger has spent her career at the intersection of social science, epidemiology, and public health, to reduce the impact of stigma on the health and well-being of minority groups, both nationally and internationally. She has built a program of funded intervention research that uses mobile health (mHealth) technologies to reduce global health inequities. Her current work includes leadership of two NIH-funded projects aimed at improving HIV-related health outcomes among gay and bisexual men in Romania: (1) a program to introduce pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) into Romania’s health care practice; and (2) a large-scale trial testing the effectiveness of an mHealth pilot intervention to reduce HIV risk, decrease problematic alcohol consumption, and improve mental health.

Dr. Jarrín Montaner leads two large NIH-funded team-science research projects focused on improving late-life care quality and outcomes for people living with advanced illness including Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. These projects build upon her ongoing work focused on the comparative effectiveness of home health care on outcomes for racial/ethnic minority older adults living with chronic and advanced illness, originally started with an AHRQ grant award. She directs the Community Health and Aging Outcomes Laboratory at Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, which evaluates how various factors shape racial/ethnic disparities in access to health care among seniors with dementias. Her earlier work conceptualizing an integral philosophy and definition of nursing has been cited in major nursing texts in the United States and Mexico, numerous doctoral dissertations, and peer-reviewed papers from six continents.

Dr. de Cordova conducts mixed-methods research focusing on improving quality of care in acute care hospitals and nursing homes. She is leading a funded, state-wide study examining the impact of nurse staffing, PPE adequacy, and fear and physical exhaustion during the COVID-19 pandemic on burnout and intent to leave among acute care nurses in New Jersey. As a faculty researcher with the New Jersey Collaborating Center for Nursing, she studies a range of nursing workforce topics. She has examined how low levels of nurse staffing and experience at night on weekends are associated with adverse patient outcomes. She also has conducted several evaluations of the legislative policy of mandated reporting of healthcare-associated infections and nurse staffing in acute care and nursing homes.