Valerie Howard, associate dean for academic affairs, announced that Debbie Travers, former associate professor with tenure, will join DUSON as an associate consulting professor to support the MSN Informatics Program and its students beginning January 1, 2021. Ryan Shaw, associate professor, will continue to provide support and leadership to the program in the interim.

She will be responsible for leading the MSN Informatics Program, teaching informatics courses, advising students and collaborating with the strategic review of the informatics program for the calendar year. Anne Derouin, MSN program director and associate professor, will work closely with Travers to ensure a smooth transition to DUSON.

Travers joined the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2004 and has been involved in emergency department triage, operations and informatics initiatives on the national level for over 20 years. She helped develop the Emergency Severity Index triage system which is widely used in the U.S. and internationally. Travers also investigates methods for improving emergency department efficiency and safety through the use of triage acuity. She has collaborated with the CDC to develop triage tools for use during an influenza pandemic.

Her informatics research focuses on use of emergency department data for public health surveillance, and she has collaborated with state and national public health organizations to advance the field of syndromic surveillance. Travers and colleagues at the University of North Carolina developed the Emergency Medical Text Processor (EMT-P) system for use in standardization of emergency department chief complaint data. She continues to study methods for processing CLINICAL text for use by public health in conducting surveillance of acute infectious disease outbreaks as well as chronic conditions of public health interest (e.g., asthma, cancer).

Please share a warm DUSON welcome with Travers when she joins our community on January 1, 2021.