Mary Jo Gilmer, PhD, MBA, RN-BC, FAAN, is a Professor of Nursing and Professor of Medicine (Paediatrics) at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. She currently serves as the Co-Director of the Pediatric Palliative Care Research Team at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include parent-sibling bereavement, parent-child communication, and interventions to reduce suffering in children with cancer.

Funded studies include interviews with bereaved parents and siblings after a child died of cancer. The long-term goal of this research is to reduce the suffering and morbidity of families affected by cancer and the loss of a child through controlled, longitudinal research on the psychosocial outcomes of these families. Dr. Gilmer’s current research is focused on the role of animal-assisted therapy with children newly diagnosed with cancer and their families and was recently featured on CNN. One potential outcome is expansion of a nurse-driven model of care aimed at improving long-term psychosocial health for children and their parents. For more information, contact IFNA member Mary Jo Gilmer.

Kiyoko Kamibeppu, RN, PhD, Professor, Department of Family Nursing, Division of Health Sciences & Nursing, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, Japan, focuses her research on childhood cancer survivorship and prevention of child abuse. For more than a decade, she has advocated for the offering of preventative child abuse interventions during pregnancy, which is now a priority in the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare in Japan. She recently developed the Maternal Mental Health Promotion Program (MMHPP) for expectant mothers. Dr. Kamibeppu currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Japanese Association for Research in Family Nursing (JARFN) and is chairperson of Research Committee and also a member of the Editorial Board of the Japanese Journal of Research in Family Nursing. For more information, please contact IFNA member, Kiyoko Kamibeppu.