The Duke University School of Nursing and The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London have partnered to foster the promotion of research and greater inform the practice of professional nursing and midwifery. The schools will jointly administer a grants program and a pilot project award to cultivate innovative, scalable scientific inquiry.  The pilot project will form the basis of a larger research project and external funding will be sought. Interested faculty members submitted their applications earlier this year.

The recipients of the travel grant are: Devon Noonan, PhD, MPH, FNP-BC, associate professor from DUSON and Maria Duaso, PhD from The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery King’s College; and Leigh Ann Simmons, PhD, MFT, associate professor from DUSON and Debra Bick, PhD from The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery King’s College.

​Noonan and Duaso both have research programs that focus broadly on health promotion of vulnerable populations with a strong focus on tobacco control. They have both developed and adopted tobacco cessation interventions and addressed socioeconomically disadvantage smokers with other substance abuse issues. A possible research question this team will answer is how to decrease multiple substance use in socioeconomically disadvantage patients with chronic disease via mhealth modalities. They plan to use their face-to-face interactions to develop the grant proposal and meet potential collaborators.

Simmons and Bick have similarities in research in that both of their research focus on identifying risk factors and evaluating interventions to address maternal morbidity and appropriate health system response. There are several potential areas for collaborative research that they would like to explore related to maternal obesity and complex medical problems during pregnancy and postpartum. During their face-to-face interaction, they would like to establish the beginnings of collaborative working relationships and potential partners, discuss current research interests and programs in depth to identify a specific focus for the pilot project and develop preliminary aims for the collaborative project that will be the focus of the application for pilot research funding.

The applications for the pilot project will be evaluated by a joint Duke-King’s College panel on their potential growth into larger joint external funding bids and their potential research impact.

Congratulations to Drs. Noonan, Duaso, Simmons and Bick!