Research Centers
Led by renowned nurse scientists, our centers are dedicated to advancing evidence-based practices, improving patient outcomes, and seting new standards in health care.
Intersecting Areas of Expertise
The college collaborates with many nursing specialties and other fields. By intersecting different areas, nursing research becomes more comprehensive and innovative, leading to more effective interventions and solutions for diverse patient populations.
Methodologic Expertise
This expertise is critical for producing high-quality, evidence-based research. Our researchers have a specialized knowledge and skill in developing robust study designs, ensuring data accuracy, and interpreting findings in ways that contribute to nursing science and improve patient care.
Faculty Research Focus Areas
Assistant Professor and Interim Director, PhD Program
Expertise: Factors related to obesity in rural adults, interventions to promote healthy behaviors and reduce obesity in rural adults, relationships between obesity and health outcomes.
Research: Rural health, obesity, physical activity, nutrition, psychosocial determinants of health.
Professor
Expertise: Cancer screening & survivorship, epidemiology methods, public health, health disparities, physical activity, subject recruitment.
Research: Disparities in cancer screening, survivorship, and epidemiology, dietary and physical activity interventions, subject recruitment strategies, inflammation processes and cancer
Dean & Helen Gurley Wolford Professor of Nursing Professor of Nursing
Expertise: Behavioral interventions, mixed methods research, randomized controlled trials, community-based participatory research, patient centered research, community-engaged research, smoking cessation.
Research: Community-based,multi-level cessation intervention, school-based tobacco prevention, smart phone behavioral trials/chronic disease management, peer navigator interventions (oral health, spinal cord injury), tobacco marketing/labels, training academic-community dyads for research.
PMHNP Program Co-Director
Expertise: Psychiatric-mental health nursing, crisis intervention, child and adolescent acute and long-term treatment, chronic mental illness in adults.
Research: Post-traumatic stress and consequences of trauma and violence, grief and trauma related to violent death, intimate partner violence, cognitive sequelae of interpersonal violence, interprofessional education innovation and evaluation.
Interim Department Chair, Professional Nursing Practice
Expertise: Pediatrics, particularly forensic medical evaluations for abuse and neglect, intensive care, developmental needs, and neurology.
Research: Prevention and recognition of child abuse and neglect, with a focus on child caregivers' protectiveness behaviors, pediatric assessment and developmental approach, clinical and didactic nursing education including critical thinking and technology-based methods.
SmartState Endowed Chair in Clinical Effectiveness Research/Chronic Care Management
Professor
Expertise: Health system and self-management interventions, interdisciplinary research and interventions, randomized controlled trials.
Research: Self-management of chronic conditions, health system interventions to improve outcomes for adult patients with chronic conditions, care transitions, medication safety and management.
Health Sciences Endowed Professor and Director, Perinatal, Pediatrics & Family Research Center
Expertise: Morbidity, mortality, and health disparities in the neonatal population. Research methods: case study, mixed methods, randomized controlled trials, observation and exploratory methods. Physiologic measurement.
Research: Clinical research with neonates and their families to reduce morbidity, mortality and health disparities.
Director, AGACNP Program and Associate Professor
Expertise: Lung cancer screening and prevention.
Research: Lung cancer screening in the post-NLST era: Primary care nurse practitioner perceptions and screening practices – USC College of Nursing.
Assistant Professor
Expertise: Mobile applications, critical care, geriatric disease processes and management, nursing and health informatics.
Research: Mobile applications to assist patients in managing and improving health and wellness; the use of informatics to advance the delivery of healthcare to improve patient outcomes.
Associate Professor
Expertise: Health disparities, breast health, African American health, Medicaid populations, community-engaged research, cancer prevention and control, mixed methods, outcomes research.
Research: Racial and social disparities in cancer prevention and control, treatment adherence in socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, promoting healthy behaviors among African American women.
Director of Faculty Fellow and Academy Programs and Associate Professor
Expertise: Health Disparities, cultural diversity, youth homelessness, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) health, violence/victimization, internet research with homeless youth, ER nursing and NP practice, theory.
Research: LGBT health disparities, violence/victimization, resilience, empowerment.
Associate Professor
Expertise: Nursing education and simulation, women’s health.
Research: Evaluation of teaching methodologies and simulation to determine effectiveness with competencies in the clinical environment, health promotion and risk reduction with evaluation of African American women and perceptions on breastfeeding.
Associate Professor and Co-Director Cancer Survivorship Center
Expertise: Cancer, early stage lung cancer, decision making, multiple health behavior change including smoking cessation, cancer survivorship, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), recruitment/retention of individual research participants and dyads, mixed methods.
Research: Adapting or developing and testing family interventions, decision making and health related quality of life (HRQL) in relation to health behavior changes, tailoring evidence-based interventions to mHealth technologies, and promotion of lung cancer screening among individuals at high-risk and providers.
Department Chair, Advanced Professional Nursing Practice & Leadership and Professor
Expertise: vulnerable populations, graduate nursing education, simulation, policy, and breast cancer survivorship
Research: Exercise among cancer survivors.
Assistant Professor
Expertise: simulation, educational disparities in nursing education, diversity.
Research: qualitative perceptions of underrepresented students in higher education, educational interventions for underrepresented minority students, simulation research particularly pedagogy used and minority nursing student outcomes.
Assistant Professor
Expertise: nurse communication and caring behaviors, geriatrics and care of the older adult, post-partum screening and care, breastfeeding/infant feeding and nutrition.
Research: delirium superimposed on dementia, Alzheimer's and caregivers, BabyCoach - a SC pilot-program for post-partum depression.
Associate Dean for Research, Inaugural Health Sciences Endowed Professor, and Co-Director Cancer Survivorship Center
Expertise: Theoretically-based exercise interventions, healthy behaviors among cancer survivors, exercise promotion in cancer survivors, peer delivered interventions, modifying sedentary behavior among middle-aged and older patient populations.
Research: Exercise adoption and maintenance, telephone-based interventions, peer-delivered interventions, modifying multiple risk behaviors, community partnerships.
Assistant Professor
Expertise: Advanced practice psychiatric-mental health nursing, substance use disorders and recovery management, self-care/self-management for parents in recovery from substance use disorders.
Research: Self-care/self-management for mothers and fathers in recovery from substance use disorders, utilization of mobile technology to enhance recovery care management, educational partnerships and IPE collaboration, and medication-assisted treatments for substance use disorders.
Assistant Professor
Expertise: Community-based health promotion intervention development, social environmental supports for health behavior change, mechanisms of health behavior change (social, cognitive, environmental), motivation (individual differences and tailoring approaches).
Professor
Expertise: Data management, statistical methods.
Interim Assistant Dean for Research and Assistant Professor
Expertise: Symptoms related to oral targeted therapy, adherence to oral cancer therapy, aging and cancer, oncology clinical trials.
Assistant Professor
Expertise: Circadian rhythm disruption effects on the human body and various health outcomes, dietary sources of inflammation, physical activity, and the effect of stress on health.
Co-Director Smart Start Honors Program and Assistant Professor
Expertise: polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), multiple methods, recruitment via social media, exercise, basic and clinical nutrition.
Research: therapeutic management for women with PCOS across the lifespan; theory-informed interventions incorporating digital technology for exercise delivery to women with PCOS; effectiveness of resistance exercise to promote symptom management among women with PCOS.