Center for Health Equity and Systems Research

Nursing Science to Advance Equity

In keeping with the funding priorities of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), CHESR advances research that furthers health promotion, equitable health outcomes, and equitable access to high-quality health care.  Also recognizing the need for a robust nursing workforce, CHESR embraces Nursing Health Services Research, testing differing models of nursing care delivery as well as interventions aimed at enhancing nurse resiliency and reducing occupational burnout.

Focus Areas

Health care Equity—Reduce and eliminate the systemic and structural inequities that place some at an unfair, unjust, and avoidable disadvantage in attaining their full health potential.

Social Determinants of Health—Identify effective approaches to improve health and quality of life by addressing the conditions in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, and age.

Population and Community Health—Address critical health challenges at a macro level that persistently affect groups of people with shared characteristics.

Prevention and Health Promotion—Prevent disease and promote health through the continuum of prevention—from primordial to tertiary.

Systems and Models of Care – Address clinical, organizational, and policy challenges through new systems and models of care.

Nursing Health Services Research—Examine access to, and the use, costs, quality, delivery, organization, financing, and outcomes of health care services to produce new knowledge about the structure, processes, and effects of health services for individuals and populations.

Inspiring Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Recognizing that the delivery of equitable care must be grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork, CHESR provides an infrastructure for research-focused faculty to collaborate with other centers within and housed at the School of Nursing. An example is the School of Nursing’s François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center, which has led programmatic grants and contracts aimed at mitigating health inequities and risks since 1987. Through collaborations, CHESR is adding new evidence-based research to existing and highly regarded health care equity programs.

“Multiple opportunities exist to design meaningful, collaborative research studies to discover bold new ways to improve health outcomes for individuals and communities who are at greatest risk for health inequities.”

— Andrea Norberg, DNP, MS, RN, Executive Director of the FXB Center

Building Expertise to Influence Change

As one of the few mentoring and training centers in the nation for conducting Nursing Health Services Research, CHESR boasts tenured faculty members who have completed formal training in this specialized arena and have established highly successful, funded programs of research that influence policy. CHESR provides a collaborative space for faculty and student scholars to expand their knowledge and skills while developing and testing differing models of nursing care delivery and nursing workforce interventions.

Director, Haiqun Lin, MD, PhD, Professor (Tenured)

Dr. Lin earned her PhD in biostatistics and is a recognized expert in longitudinal and multilevel modeling, mediation analysis, and latent class modeling with random effects for longitudinal and time-to-event data. Her focus is on health services research, cancer research, as well as mental health and aging research. She is currently teamed with Dr. Olga Jarrin Montaner on two NIH-funded R33s and an NIH-funded R01 that focus on improvements in late-life care for older persons living with dementia.

Charlotte Thomas-Hawkins, PhD, RN, FAAN, Associate Professor (Tenured) and Associate Dean of the Division of Nursing Science

Member

Dr. Thomas-Hawkins is is formally trained as a Nursing Health Services Researcher (NHSR). Her research focus is on organizational factors affecting clinical outcomes of patients receiving chronic renal dialysis. She has received previous funding from NIH and several funding awards from the American Nephrology Nurses Association (ANNA). Results from the ANNA-funded studies were leveraged to influence federal policies related to RN staffing in outpatient dialysis centers.

Angela Starkweather, PhD, ACNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN, Dean and Professor

Member

As an adult acute care nurse practitioner and nurse scientist, Dr. Starkweather has an ongoing program of research focused on elucidating the biopsychosocial mechanisms of pain and other distressing conditions, developing multi-level interventions to improve health, quality of life, and health equity, and implementing research and evidence into practice and systems of care. Dr. Starkweather has been continuously NIH-funded over the past decade amassing over $20M in research support, has over 200 peer-reviewed publications, is editor of three books, and co-editor of Topics in Pain Management. She serves on the American Association of Neuroscience Nurses Clinical Practice Guidelines board, the American Academy of Nursing’s Genomic Nursing and Health Outcomes Expert Panel and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Genomics and Precision Health Roundtable. Dr. Starkweather has been a member and chair of various NIH and Department of Defense study sections over her career.

Join Us

Members, affiliate members, and their guests/collaborators have access to:

• Private and group mentorship sessions on research design and data analyses
• Collaborative, interdisciplinary research opportunities
• Modest, competitive intramural funding for pilot studies
• Information on funding resources
• Seminars and lectures, ranging from one to three hours in length