Duke University School of Nursing (DUSON) is proud to announce eight of its doctoral students were selected to participate in the Jonas Nurse Scholar program. The Jonas Center for Nursing and Veterans Healthcare provides an $80,000 grant to support three PhD Jonas Nurse Leader Scholars, three PhD Jonas Veterans Healthcare Scholars, and two DNP Jonas Veterans Healthcare Scholars with a $10,000 scholarship each.

The Jonas Nurse Leader Scholars Program prepares doctoral candidates to help students address the needs of future patients – from dealing with co-morbidities and chronic illnesses to providing culturally competent care. Dominque Bulgin, BSN, RN; Cherie Conley, MS, RN; and Gabrielle Harris, MSN, RN, were chosen as PhD Jonas Nurse Leader Scholars.

Bulgin graduated in 2015 with a BSN with highest honors from Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University. During her undergraduate study at Emory, she was involved in a secondary analysis research study about the health behaviors of college women experiencing sexual violence and disordered eating symptomology. Her experiences volunteering in a sickle cell clinic inspired her current research interests, which includes stigmatization of pain management in sickle cell disease and resulting outcomes in mental health self-management of care. Conley worked as a registered nurse in the cardiovascular unit of various hospitals around the country for eight years. After working in so many communities, she wanted to find out why there were such vast differences in the uptake of health knowledge and burden of disease between different populations around the world. She completed her master’s degrees in global health and community health nursing where she studied HIV risk perception among African-American women in college and the impact of PEPFAR (The United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) on HIV incidence in Africa. Harris is a member the Winston-Salem State University (WSSU)-Duke Bridge to the Doctorate program and intends to have a positive and significant impact on the nursing profession by using research to help develop culturally- and evidence-based measures as well as interventions. She graduated from WSSU with a BSN and an MSN. Harris is interested in examining the impact of depression in African-American stroke survivors.

The Jonas Veterans Healthcare Program supports the doctoral-level training of nurses who are focused on veteran-specific health care needs, ranging from policy and administration to education and patient care delivery, to help ensure veterans are receiving the best possible care. Ashlee Vance, MS, RN; Kristin Wainwright, BSN, RN; Vanessa Curlee, MSN, RN; James Reed, MSN, CRNA; and Heather Shattuck, MSN, ACNP, were chosen as Jonas Veterans Healthcare Scholars.

Vance completed a BS in psychology from Cornerstone University, a master’s in counseling psychology from Western Michigan University and an accelerated BSN (ABSN) from Virginia Commonwealth University. While in her ABSN program she was a research assistant in a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded grant about play and touch massage with preterm infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Currently Vance is studying parenting in the NICU and how parental identity is influenced by the birth of infants with complex chronic illness. Her goal is to promote parental role attainment to improve long-term infant and parent outcomes. Wainwright has a BA in the natural sciences from New College of Florida, a BSN from East Carolina University and is a graduate of the NIH National Institute of Nursing Research Summer Genetics Institute. She has taken part in a variety of research projects including a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences-funded study that investigated the effects of Florida red tide on human health, an undergraduate thesis on puffer fish poisoning, a real-time occupational radiation exposure study and a variety of neurosurgery-related clinical and device trials. Her research interests are in genetics and genomics nursing and symptom management in chronic illness. Curlee has a deep commitment to serving disparate and underserved health populations and that prompted her interest in advanced study to better serve these communities. After completing her BSN at WSSU, Curlee entered the US Army as a commissioned officer. In 2015, she earned her MSN from WSSU, specializing in the family nurse practitioner role, with a research intensive concentration. Her interests focus on continued research and development of complementary and alternative medicine in addition to improved methods in identifying and treating mental illness in minority adolescents and young adults. Reed is a nurse anesthetist in the Department of Anesthesia Services at First Health Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst, N.C., a Duke University Nurse Anesthesia Program clinical coordinator and the Staff Life Support/Education chief. He earned his commission as a Distinguished Military Graduate in 1992 after graduating with a BSN. While a member of an elite medical unit that supported special mission units in counter-terrorist operations, he deployed nine times to war for over 1500 days in a combat zone conducting hundreds of combat missions and administering care to hundreds of casualties. After retiring from the Army in 2011, Reed became involved in veterans advocacy. Shattuck is a Nurse Corps lieutenant commander with the United States Navy. She currently serves as the emergency/trauma critical care clinical nurse specialist and acute care nurse practitioner at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Shattuck served as the first clinical nurse specialist for the emergency/trauma department and became board-certified licensed, and credentialed as an acute care nurse practitioner. In this role, she expanded her scope of practice as a provider and worked alongside attending emergency department physicians.  In 2001, Shattuck was deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She has a BSN from Niagara University and an MSN from the University of Maryland.