2023 AAPINA Conference

Elizabeth Tarlov, PhD, RN is the Director of the Division of Extramural Science Programs of the National Institute of Nursing Research.

Dr. Tarlov joined NINR in April 2022. She previously held dual appointments as Research Health Scientist in the Center of Innovation for Complex Chronic Healthcare, Edward Hines, Jr. Veterans Affairs (VA) Hospital and Associate Professor of Population Health Nursing Science, University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Nursing. Dr. Tarlov earned a PhD in Health Policy and Administration (UIC), MS in Nursing (Family Nurse Practitioner; Pace University), and BA in American Studies (Middlebury College). Dr. Tarlov completed postdoctoral training in the Midwest Center for Health Services and Policy Research, Hines VA Hospital. She began her nursing career as a family nurse practitioner, providing primary care to migrant farm workers and their families and later in community health centers and other settings.

Dr. Tarlov has a long-standing commitment to research on the social determinants of health. Her program of research integrated individual, institutional, and community-level data to identify impacts of policy and the environment on adult health and behavior, healthcare outcomes, and health inequities. As an innovator in record linkages, Dr. Tarlov’s research program creatively leveraged the vast data resources of the VA in combination with external public and proprietary data sources to obtain new insights into contextual influences on health and healthcare effectiveness. She has also conducted methodological work focused on derivation of valid measures of individuals’ social and economic characteristics from raw administrative data. She has led and participated as co-investigator on numerous grants funded by NIH, VA, and PCORI. She has published widely including in Health Services Research, Medical Care, Obesity, and Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention. Dr. Tarlov’s previous leadership roles include Associate Director of the VA Information Resource Center; Chair, VA Nursing Research Field Advisory Committee; Board of Directors, Heartland Health Centers (an FQHC); and Steering Committee, Chicago Area Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Network (CAPriCORN), a PCORnet clinical data research network.

Dr. Eun-Ok Im is an internationally known methodologist and theorist in the field of global cross-cultural women’s health research, addressing gender and ethnic differences in health/illness experience of midlife women, including cancer survivorship, menopausal symptoms, and physical activity. Dr. Im’s most outstanding contribution to nursing is a research program that adopts Internet, computer, and mobile technologies to eliminate gender and ethnic disparities in midlife women’s health issues. She is a pioneer who has taken the lead in this evolving field from the late 1990s, and her studies are among the first of their kind to use these technologies to build nursing knowledge.

Over two decades, Dr. Im has successfully solicited NIH funding to support her research, including five R01, one R21, and one R61/R33 studies as PI, and has aggressively disseminated her findings, with over 400 publications (232 refereed journal articles). By developing the theoretical and methodological structures and frameworks for ethical and culturally sensitive research in the Digital Age, Dr. Im's studies have led and impacted over 200 students and researchers far beyond the scope of her own work and continuously impact advances in nursing science.

Also, her leadership is reflected in her former and current national and international services, including her presidentship of the Asian American Pacific Islander Nurses Association. She has numerous national and international awards including the 2014 International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame Award from the Sigma Theta Tau International, the 2020 Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science (CANS) Outstanding Nurse Scientist award, the 2022 SNRS Distinguished Researcher Award, the 2022 Faye Glenn Abdellah Research Leadership Award by the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research (FNINR), the 2023 Oncology Nursing Society Distinguished Researcher Award, and the Helen Nahm Distinguished Lectureship. She was also one of the 2019 NINR Director's lecturers.