College of Nursing Faculty Members Receive Research Awards

Gail D’Eramo Melkus, the Florence and William Downs Professor in Nursing Research in the College of Nursing received the 2009 Distinguished Nurse Researcher Award from the Foundation of the New York State Nurses Association, at their annual meeting, October 8, 2009, in Saratoga Springs, NY. Mary Rosedale, assistant professor in the College of Nursing, who also has a faculty appointment in the Department of Psychiatry, will receive the Novice Nurse Researcher from the Foundation of the New York State Nurses Association.

Dr. Melkus is one of the nation’s leading experts on diabetes care for ethnic and minority groups, and she has been consistently recognized as one of the nation’s foremost thought leaders in this important area of research and scholarship. Dr. Melkus demonstrates the highest academic standards with an extraordinary list of accomplishments that include NIH funding, recognition by her peers as reflected in her membership as a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, and recognition from the Sigma Theta Tau National Nursing Honors Society as recipient of the Diamond Jubilee Virginia Henderson Excellence in Nursing Research Award.

Throughout her career, Dr. Melkus has cared for persons with type 2 diabetes (most recently in New York), taught others to provide excellent care and directed programs of research aimed at helping persons with diabetes, particularly women of color, to participate in their own self-management of the disease. As an adult nurse practitioner and certified diabetes educator, caring for persons with diabetes, Dr. Melkus recognized that health professionals need specialized knowledge to care for these patients. Through her scientific work, Dr. Melkus has implemented intervention studies aimed at improving control and decreasing the complications associated with type 2 diabetes in culturally diverse populations. Her program of research continues to have a positive impact on the care of the underserved.

Dr. Melkus has published extensively in the area of diabetes care, specifically on culturally sensitive interventions. The body of her scientific work has informed the field and drawn students from all over the United States and internationally to study with her. Dr. Melkus has been funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Nursing Research to test an intervention aimed at improving the care provided to community-based African American women, by supporting their efforts at self-management.

Dr. Mary Rosedale is an outstanding young scholar and recipient of numerous academic awards, whose program of research related to women’s mental health and brain health is a pioneering area of research that involves use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a novel brain stimulation treatment recently approved by the FDA to treat clinical depression.

She is the principal investigator for two current foundation-funded studies one focusing on women’s mental health, the other on brain health of TMS patients; she is co-investigator of an NYUCN funded study of female breast cancer survivors. Her publications in prestigious journals, book chapters, and national and international presentations provide evidence of her potential as a prolific contributor to building nursing science and making significant contributions to interdisciplinary scientific bodies of knowledge, particularly in brain research and treatment of women’s mental health needs. She is the guest editor of a forthcoming interdisciplinary issue of the Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association on the science and clinical practice related to TMS. Dr. Rosedale, a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, is the first nurse to complete Fellowships in Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) at New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University.