New York Times Nurse Award Won By Rutgers College Of Nursing Faculty Member Rachel Jones

Main Category: Nursing / Midwifery
Also Included In: HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 04 Oct 2007 - 2:00 PDT

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Rutgers College of Nursing faculty member Rachel Jones has been selected to be the recipient of the Nurse Educator of the New York Times 2007 Tribute to Nurses Award.

The New York Times selected three practicing nurses and one nurse educator from hundreds of candidates nominated by patients and their families, students and colleagues. The winners will be featured in a special section in the Dec. 2 New York Times Magazine.

Jones, assistant professor at the College of Nursing at Rutgers, The State University, was honored for her work in developing video vignettes to reduce HIV sexual risk behavior in young women living in urban areas.

"It is an honor to be a recipient of this award. It is our hope that this award promotes ongoing awareness of the importance of promoting innovative approaches to reduce HIV/AIDS and to base these approaches on the wisdom of women and men in the community. Young students in multiple disciplines from nursing and the performing arts had the opportunity to participate in research and serve the community through practice. These videos are truly a labor of love in the fight against AIDS," said Jones, a Boonton, Township N.J. resident. "The important aspect of this work is understanding, interpreting, and communicating women's knowledge about the relationship pressures that can get in the way of reducing HIV risk and through the drama, show ways women can turn the situation around."

She and her team, composed of Alan Roth, an independent documentary filmmaker, Robert Nahory, a digital application developer at Rutgers-Newark Dana Library, nursing students, performing arts students and graduates from the Rutgers-Newark campus, technology students, and people from the community, created a 43-minute soap opera video and several shorter videos aimed at reducing HIV risk in inner city women. The research was funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

The urban soap opera-type vignettes are based on information gathered and analyzed from focus groups in public housing developments in Jersey City and other locations in Newark.

The heroines are young adult African-American and Latina women acting with awareness of new choices to promote health. Recently, her team created a web site to promote access to the videos. Interested persons can view the videos and learn more about this research to reduce HIV/AIDS through soap opera dramatization.

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From its headquarters at Rutgers Newark, Rutgers College of Nursing offers a broad range of academic programs on all three Rutgers campuses. The college offers a master's program with unique practitioner specialties, a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree, and the first to offer a Ph.D. nursing degree in New Jersey.

Source: Miguel Tersy
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

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