Leadership, Board of Directors

President
Marcia Van Riper, PhD, RN (USA)
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

Marcia Van Riper, PhD, RN

Marcia Van Riper, PhD, RN, FAAN is a Professor and the Chair of the Family Health Division in the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). She has a joint appointment in the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences. The primary focus of her program of research is the family experience of being tested for and living with a genetic condition, with special emphasis on families of children with Down syndrome. To date, other conditions she has focused on include Sickle Cell Disease, Cystic Fibrosis, Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer, Huntington Disease, and Factor V Leiden. Marcia coordinates efforts within the UNC-CH School of Nursing to integrate family, genetics, genomics, ethics, and pharmacogenomics throughout both the undergraduate and graduate curricula. Each semester she teaches a required undergraduate nursing course, “Family-Centered Genomic Health Care.” In addition, every other year she coordinates an interdisciplinary course “Genomics and Society.” Marcia and her international colleagues are currently conducting a mixed-methods, cross-cultural study designed to address existing gaps in knowledge concerning how cultural scripts and a variety of family factors (i.e., family demands, family appraisal, family resources, family problem solving communication, family coping, and family management styles) contribute to adaptation and resilience in families of individuals with Down Syndrome. To date, over 500 families of individuals with Down syndrome from the United States and Mexico have participated in the study. In the upcoming year, the study will expand to include families of individuals with Down Syndrome from a number of different countries (e.g., Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal, and Thailand).  Recently, Marcia was awarded a Fulbright Scholar Award to spend 5 months at the Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork, Ireland, collaborating with faculty on family research, teaching, and publishing.  According to Marcia, some of the best experiences of her career are the experiences she has had while attending Family Nursing Conferences throughout the world.

President-Elect
Sharon Denham, DSN, RN (USA)
Ohio University, School of Nursing

Sharon Denham, DSN, RN

Dr. Denham graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1997. She is a full professor at Ohio University’s School of Nursing, Athens, Ohio where she has taught since 1991. She has had leadership roles in the Appalachian Studies Association, the National Council on Family Relations, served on the Board of Directors or the National League for Nursing’s Accreditation Commission, and is currently president-elect for the International Family Nursing Association. Her research has largely focused on family health and Appalachian health disparities. She has numerous publications and has given many regional, national, and international presentations. Her book entitled Family Health: A Framework for Nursing, a conceptual framework, suggests an ecological lens to understand the health needs of contextually embedded family households. She spent several years working with the National Diabetes Education Program to develop Diabetes: A Family Matter www.diabetesfamily.net. This culturally sensitive program and toolkit focuses on health promotion and type 2 diabetes prevention in the Appalachian region. She is beginning a second year of a CDC funded dissemination and evaluation project working with 16 Appalachian counties in 3 states. A newly awarded CDC funded project called Strengthening Communities to Prevent Diabetes in Rural Appalachia promises to bring almost $2.5 million over the next 5 years to prevention work in 11 counties in 5 states.

Secretary
Roberta S. Rehm, RN, PhD (USA)
University of California San Francisco

Roberta S. Rehm, RN, PhD

Roberta S. Rehm, PhD, RN is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Health Care Nursing at the University of California at San Francisco. She had a long clinical career as a pediatric nurse, working as a Neonatal Nurse Educator and a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Pediatric Cardiology. Currently, she conducts research with families raising children with complex chronic conditions, and teaches care of children with special health care needs and qualitative research methods to master’s and doctoral students. Her current projects include an ethnographic study of planning for the transition to adulthood for youth with complex needs, and a Community Based Participatory Research  project, in which her team is conducting a pilot study of an intervention to facilitate transition planning for youth and families. Roberta has enjoyed meeting family nurses from around the world while attending International Family Nursing Congresses in the U.S., Chile, Canada, and Iceland. She hopes to see YOU in Kyoto, Japan in June, 2011.

Treasurer
Donna Miles Curry, PhD, RN (USA)
Wright State University

Donna Miles Curry, PhD, RN

Donna Miles Curry, PhD, RN is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs for the College of Nursing & Health, Wright State University.  Dr. Curry received her AA in Nursing from Maryville College, St. Louis, her BSN & MSN from St. Louis University and her PhD in Family Relations & Human Development from The Ohio State University.  She has been a pediatric nurse for over 35 years.  In addition to being a pediatric nurse, Dr. Curry is an educator, administrator and board certified pediatric clinical nurse specialist. Her program of research has included parenting during infancy, pain management, nursing education and nursing education history.  Dr. Curry lectures on family nursing in both the undergraduate and graduate programs.  In addition to IFNA, Dr. Curry is an active member of several other professional nursing organizations such as Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society and the Society of Pediatric Nurses.

Directors (3-Year Term)

Janice M. Bell, RN, PhD (Canada)
University of Calgary

Janice M. Bell, RN, PhD

Janice M. Bell, RN, PhD, is a nurse educator, author, and agent of change with a mission to build capacity in nurses and other health care practitioners to care for families with competence, confidence, and compassion. She co-developed the Illness Beliefs Model (http://www.illnessbeliefsmodel.com) and focuses her scholarship on Family Systems Nursing, illness suffering and family healing, therapeutic conversations with families, family interventions in health care, and family intervention research. She is the Editor of the Journal of Family Nursing (http://jfn.sagepub.com) and served as the Director of the Family Nursing Unit, University of Calgary (2002-2007).  She currently offers workshops and consultation about practice knowledge with families to an international community of health care professionals.

Website: http://www.janicembell.com

Catherine A. Chesla, RN, DNSc, FAAN (USA)
University of California San Francisco

Catherine A. Chesla, RN, DNSc, FAAN

Catherine (Kit) Chesla, RN, DNSc, FAAN is Professor and Shobe Endowed Chair for Ethics and Spirituality in the Department of Family Health Care Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco.  For over 20 years she has taught family theory, intervention and research methods to doctoral and Family Nurse Practitioner students.  Her research focuses on understanding and intervening with families where an adult member has a chronic illness. She has conducted multiple studies with families living with type 2 diabetes in African American, Chinese American, Latino and White families. Currently she heads an NIH-funded Community Based Participatory Research project where, in partnership with service agencies in San Francisco’s Chinatown, she offers a family-focused cognitive behavioral intervention to assist Chinese immigrants manage their diabetes. Her team adapted an intervention to be culturally appropriate, and they are testing its efficacy in this population.

Websites: http://nurseweb.ucsf.edu/public/shobe/index.shtml
http://nurseweb.ucsf.edu/www/ffchesk.htm

Erla Kolbrun Svavarsdottir, RN PhD (Iceland)
University of Iceland Faculty of Nursing

Erla Kolbrun Svavarsdottir, RN, PhD

Erla Kolbrun Svavarsdottir, is a professor and the academic chair of family nursing at the University of Iceland, Faculty of Nursing and at Landspitali University Hospital.  During the past decade, she has collaborated on national and international research focusing on families of children with asthma.  She has also collaborated with Icelandic researchers on intervention research projects regarding families of children and adolescents with cancer, asthma, and diabetes.  Her current research links quality of life with family experiences of violence, childhood chronic illness and adolescents with cancer.  She is also working these days on family nursing intervention research within the Icelandic culture.  Dr. Svavarsdottir has published her work in several national and international nursing journals as well as having published book chapters both within Iceland as well as internationally.

Directors (2-Year Term)

Suzanne Feetham, PhD, RN, FAAN (USA)
University of WI Milwaukee and Children’s National Medical Center

Suzanne Feetham, PhD, RN, FAAN

Suzanne Feetham, PhD, RN, FAAN has held clinical, research and leadership positions in academia, health systems and the United States Federal government. Her career has focused on health care of families and underserved populations. She is recognized nationally and internationally for her research and scholarship in nursing research of families and the integration of genetics and genomics in national education, practice and policy. As holder of the H. H. Werley Endowed Research Chair at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she was Principle investigator on a study of families considering genetic testing for cancer susceptibility, co-investigator on four family studies funded by the National Institutes of Health. In 1977 she developed the Feetham Family Functioning Survey (FFFS). Currently, the FFFS is used in research of families across disciplines, has been translated into several languages including American Sign Language, Spanish, Russian, Bosnian, Chinese and Japanese and has reported application in more than 70 research publications. Currently she is Visiting Professor at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and Nursing Research Consultant at Children’s National Medical Center Washington DC

Naohiro Hohashi, PhD, RN PHN (Japan)
Kobe University

Naohiro Hohashi, PhD, RN, PHN

Naohiro Hohashi, PhD, RN, PHN, graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1989. In 1992, instruction in the field of family health nursing began in Japan, and from its start he worked to support pioneering efforts to nurture this new field at the Department of Family Nursing, the University of Tokyo. At present he is a full professor at the Division of Family Health Care Nursing, Kobe University Graduate School of Health Sciences, where he is responsible for a master’s program leading to certification as Certified Nurse Specialist (CNS) in Family Health Nursing — a family health nursing specialty unique to Japan. He also serves as Director of International Exchanges for the Japanese Association for Research in Family Nursing (JARFN). His fields of research and practice cover a wide range of subjects, from inpatient (at hospitals) to outpatient and at-home (community), both in Japan and overseas.

Website: http://www.hohashi.org/

Carole Robinson, PhD, RN (Canada)
University of British Columbia, Okanagan

Carole Robinson, PhD, RN

Dr. Carole Robinson is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus. She teaches nursing research and graduate level psychosocial oncology. Carole is providing leadership in the development of an interprofessional clinic where there will be a nursing focus on graduate clinical work with families experiencing life limiting illness.  Her research addresses family health and wellbeing in the context of life threatening illness and at end-of-life. Her research is intervention focused and spans the spectrum from prevention to assisting families to live well while a member is dying. One stream of research aims to influence continued family smoking when there is a diagnosis of lung cancer in the family. Another stream is concerned with enhancing rural palliative care and supporting rural family palliative caregivers. She is a member of a large collaborative team investigating transitions in care for older persons living in nursing homes and requiring care in a hospital emergency department. Here again, there is a focus on the consequences of system reliance on family caregivers. She is beginning work in the area of family caregiving in the circumstance of early stage dementia and is shaping gender sensitive interventions in several projects. Dr. Robinson is a PORT (Psychosocial Oncology Research Training) mentor and a member of the BC Cancer Agency Sociobehavioral Research Centre.