Faculty apppointments
Deborah Watkins Bruner |
Five faculty members will join the School of Nursing this fall, providing expertise in cancer, cardiovascular diseases, HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, nursing policy, and research design.
Deborah Watkins Bruner RN PhD FAAN, an internationally recognized authority on cancer care and quality of life, will hold a dual appointment as a professor in the School of Nursing and associate director of cancer outcomes at Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute.
“Dr. Bruner is one of the nation’s preeminent researchers in oncology nursing,” says Dean Linda McCauley. “She will greatly enhance our research and our collaborations with Winship Cancer Institute.”
Bruner’s research focuses on quality of life and symptom management across cancer sites as well as decision-making preferences and utilities for cancer care. She is best known for her pioneering leadership of the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group with the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Bruner is the first and only nurse to lead an NCI national cooperative group.
She comes to Emory from the University of Pennsylvania, where she served as the Independence Professor in Nursing Education.
Clint Shedd RN DNP C-FNP is a family nurse practitioner who specializes in critical care, pulmonary medicine, and allergy medicine. Shedd has more than 17 years of experience in nursing. His areas of expertise include shaping nursing policies and procedures, electronic medical record configuration, and research design.
Sydney Spangler PhD CNM is an expert in maternal and newborn health in low-resource settings. Her current research focuses on community-level obstetric interventions. She has practiced midwifery in nearly a dozen countries, including Ghana, India, Zambia, Tanzania, and Kenya. She recently served as a postdoctoral research fellow in public health at Johns Hopkins.
As a clinician and nurse scientist, Faye Routledge RN PhD develops nursing interventions for patients with cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure and hypertension. She currently serves as a reviewer for several publications, including the International Journal of Psychophysiology, American Journal of Hypertension, and Health Psychology. Routledge recently served as a postdoctoral research associate in behavioral medicine at Duke University Medical Center.
Psychologist Drenna Waldrop-Valverde PhD holds a dual appointment in the School of Nursing and the Rollins School of Public Health. She is a nationally recognized scholar in psychology, HIV/AIDS, and medication adherence. Waldrop-Valverde leads two NIH studies on the effects of cognitive impairment and poor health literacy on medication adherence among HIV patients.
