Lawrence Ganong, PhD, is a Chancellor’s Professor of Human Development and Family Science and an Emeritus Professor of the Sinclair School of Nursing at the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. Larry is semi-retired but continues to write about and conduct research on resilience processes in post-divorce families, particularly stepfamilies. He and his wife and primary collaborator, Marilyn Coleman, have co-written or co-edited 10 books, and Ganong has co-authored nearly 300 refereed journal articles. Originally strictly a quantitative researcher, most of his scholarship over the past 30 years has been qualitative or mixed methods, although recently he has led some quantitative projects in which dyadic data were collected online from husbands and wives. Ganong has been interested in relationship development and maintenance across structural transitions in families, work he continues to do. 

He also has long been interested in how nurses and health care professionals in general interact with structurally diverse families. He is a “founding” editorial board member of the Journal of Family Nursing, and he is pleased about how the journal has developed to become a strong voice for family nursing scholarship.  He is an honorary member of Sigma Theta Tau and received an award in 2011 from the Journal of Family Nursing for his contributions to family nursing scholarship. In the spring of 2019, he received an honorary alumnus award from the Sinclair School of Nursing Alumni Association. For more information, contact IFNA member, Lawrence (Larry) Ganong.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LGanong

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence-ganong-1235841a/

Karen S. Lyons, PhD, FGSA, is a Professor at the William F. Connell School of Nursing at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. She received her bachelor’s and masters in psychology from University College Dublin, Ireland, and her PhD in Human Development and Family Studies from The Pennsylvania State University, where she specialized in gerontology and the family. Over her career, her program of research has focused on family experiences of chronic illness with particular attention to the family care dyad. Her innovative conceptual and methodological contributions to dyadic science and over two decades of family care research culminated in the Theory of Dyadic Illness Management (2018) – the first to propose chronic illness management as a dyadic phenomenon. The theory is currently being used across disciplines to study dyads in cancer, stroke, heart failure, dysphagia, dementia, and palliative care, to name a few. Her body of work has been cited in almost 100 review articles and textbooks and has led to numerous interdisciplinary and international collaborations and Fellowship in the Gerontological Society of America (2014). Her current work is focused on dyadic interventions to balance the needs of both members of the care dyad across the adult lifespan, including a current trial to examine the efficacy and feasibility of a dyadic intervention for couples living with heart failure.

Karen currently chairs the IFNA Dyadic Research Sub-Committee. She has purposely spent her entire career in schools of nursing, collaborating with, teaching, and mentoring nurses in family care.

For more information, contact IFNA member Karen Lyons.

Twitter: @KSLCareDyads 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-s-lyons-phd-fgsa-b0181a11/

Jeanne Murphy, PhD, CNM, FACNM, is an Assistant Professor of nursing at the George Washington University School of Nursing. Prior to joining the university faculty, Dr. Murphy was a program officer in the Healthcare Delivery and Disparities Research Program at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) in Washington, DC. Dr. Murphy completed a post-doctoral fellowship on cancer prevention with the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Rockville, Maryland. During her work at the NIH, she designed and conducted research on the prevention of breast and cervical cancer among underserved populations.

Dr. Murphy’s current program of research seeks to improve understanding of breastfeeding in childbearing families and develop breastmilk predictive analytics to improve care of breastfeeding women. The goal of this work is to improve long-term breast health. Her cancer prevention research also examines approaches to embed cancer prevention interventions in maternal care practice and expands understanding of the mechanisms of cancer prevention through lactation. Dr. Murphy is a practicing midwife and she works at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center with childbearing families. View her LinkedIn profile here https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanne-murphy-0184698/ Or for more information, contact IFNA member, Dr. Murphy at [email protected]

Amanda (Mandy) Towell-Barnard, DCur, MCur, BCur (equivalent to PhD, masters and bachelor degrees), RN, Diploma (Critical Care), is a Senior Research Fellow at the Edith Cowan University School of Nursing and Midwifery and an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Centre for Nursing Research at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, a top tertiary care and teaching hospital in Australia.  She is a member of the IFNA Australia/New Zealand Chapter.

Dr. Towell-Barnard’s research focuses on improving clinical outcomes within the acute care setting for adult patients with diabetes, morbid obesity, and intravascular access devices. Her research also explores the concepts of emotional intelligence and well-being.

She seeks to contribute to the knowledge framework about how to address diabetes education. Another objective is to develop strategies to enhance patient readiness for discharge from the acute care settings, particularly for older adults with type 2 diabetes and mild cognitive impairment. Her overall goal is to promote the care of patients and their families within acute care settings.

Dr. Towell-Barnard was honored in 2016 when she was selected for the West Australian Nursing & Midwifery Excellence Awards as a finalist for Excellence in Research. To learn more about IFNA member, Dr. Towell-Barnard, contact her at [email protected].

Follow Mandy Towell-Barnard on Twitter @mandzz30Mandy and view her LinkedIn profile here /amanda-towell-barnard-a5b29056/. 

On February 9, 2019, IFNA Research Committee co-chair, Dr. Kim Mooney-Doyle (University of Maryland), gave an invited keynote, “Innovation in Family Nursing Research: Moving Everyday Research Processes Toward Extraordinary Heights” at the Annual Research Promotion Seminar of Japanese Association for Research in Family Nursing (JARFN)/ Research Promotion Committee (chair Dr. Kiyoko Kamibeppu). Drs. Akiko Araki, Mari Ikeda, Kyoko Kobayashi, and Sachiko Kita (members of the Research Promotion Committee and members of IFNA) also presented their research topics. This exchange between IFNA members deepened the discussion about innovation in family nursing research.