The Wayne State University College of Nursing has announced the recipients of its internal research awards for spring 2022. Thanks to the generosity of donors, the following College of Nursing faculty members will receive financial support to advance their ongoing research addressing important issues across various areas of nursing science.

Harriet H. Werley Faculty Research Award: $5,000

Assistant Professor Seung Hee Choi, PhD, RN

Dr. Harriet H. Werley, the founder and first director of the Center for Health Research, endowed this award to assist faculty in achieving major research funding objectives and to attract additional extramural research funding to the College of Nursing.

The spring 2022 award will support Dr. Choi’s project, “We Quit: Development and Pilot Trial of a Mobile Web App for Smoking Couples,” which aims to develop and conduct a usability pre-test for a theory-guided, couple-based mobile web app intervention tailored to smoker couples where at least one partner smokes. The development of the app and the pre-test will demonstrate the feasibility of app development and participant recruitment to support an NIH R34 proposal for intervention development in March 2023.

Dr. Judith Fry-McComish and Philip A. McComish Endowed Research Award: $1,500

Assistant Professor Dalia Khalil, PhD, RN

Dr. Fry McComish, a professor in the College of Nursing from 1989 to 2015 who also held a joint appointment at the WSU School of Medicine from 1992 to 2007, endowed this award with her husband, engineer Philip A. McComish, to promote scholarship focused on the socioemotional health and development of vulnerable infants and their families and/or on infant mental health from a nursing perspective.

The spring 2022 award will support Dr. Khalil’s project, “Family Stress, Coparenting, and Infant Development Among Arab-American Families,” which is examining the hypothesis that higher parent migration-related stress will be associated with higher infant stress and lower infant developmental test scores. Using a cross-sectional design, the study will recruit 120 immigrant Arab American families who migrated to the United States within the past 10 years and have an infant 6 to 24 months old.

Ada Jacox Pain and Symptom Management Research Award: $5,000

Assistant Professor Bincy Joshwa, PhD, MSN, RN

This award was established to promote research in pain and symptom management as well as the formulation of practice guidelines. It will support Dr. Joshwa’s project, “Trajectory Patterns and Factors Predicting Fatigue in Individuals on Hemodialysis,” which aims to develop an effective combination of non-pharmacological methods that will alleviate fatigue and improve the quality of life in hemodialysis patients, with a primary objective to improve understanding of the diurnal fatigue patterns and factors that contribute to fatigue in individuals on hemodialysis.


 

Cross-Area Collaborative PhD/DNP Faculty Pilot Study: $3,500

Assistant Professor Dalia Khalil, PhD, RN, and Clinical Instructor Nicole Audritsh, DNP, CNM

This award was established by the Office of Health Research in 2022 to help increase collaboration among researchers in different content areas and involve PhD and DNP faculty in collaborative research in the Wayne State University College of Nursing.

The spring 2022 award will support Dr. Khalil and Dr Audtrish’s pilot study, “Health Literacy and Postpartum Depression,” which aims to evaluate the relationship between health literacy and postpartum depression symptoms among African American, low-income women by using a cross-sectional pilot design to recruit 85 African American postpartum mothers who have had a newborn within 1 to 12 months. Mothers will be recruited from the Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program and a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in Detroit.

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Recognized as a leader in nursing education, knowledge generation and contemporary nursing practice, the Wayne State University College of Nursing has been dedicated to providing the highest quality education to a diverse population of students for more than 75 years. Through our BSN, MSN, PhD, DNP and graduate certificate programs, Wayne State nursing graduates are prepared to be leaders in research, education and practice, with an enhanced focus on addressing health disparities and the health care needs of urban populations. U.S. News and World Report has recognized the WSU College of Nursing for offering BSN, MSN and DNP programs that are ranked among the best in the country.