12th Annual Penn Medicine Nursing Research and Evidence-based Practice Conference

Shannon N. Zenk, PhD, MPH, RN is Director of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). With a background in nursing and public health, Dr. Zenk’s research is centered on environmental injustice and health. Her work takes a contextual and spatial approach to understanding the role of the environment in health behaviors and outcomes, with the ultimate goal of producing evidence to eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities.

Since becoming Director of NINR, Dr. Zenk has led the development of the Institute’s new strategic plan with a bold focus on social determinants of health and health equity and serves as the co-chair of several NIH-wide efforts, including the Social Determinants of Health Research Coordinating Committee, the Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society (ComPASS) Program, the Implementing a Maternal health and PRegnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone (IMPROVE) Initiative, and the Climate Change and Health Initiative.

Dr. Zenk joined NINR in 2020 following a 14-year career as a faculty member at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Nursing and Institute for Health Research and Policy. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, and was inducted into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame in 2019.

Sean Clarke is a nurse and health services researcher who currently serves as the Ursula Springer Professor in Nursing Leadership at the New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing. Dr Clarke's research focuses on workforce issues and quality and safety issues in healthcare. A nurse for 3 decades, he has held endowed chairs and managed interdisciplinary research groups, joint academia-practice roles, and senior academic leadership roles. He has taught nursing and health policy in universities in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia and currently is Editor-in-Chief of Nursing Outlook, the world's leading journal specializing in policy, leadership, and professional issues in nursing. He is co-principal investigator on an evaluation of the model for the Magnet recognition program sponsored by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. He completed basic clinical and research training at McGill University and pursued postgraduate clinical training and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

Maria Yefimova is the lead nurse scientist with the Center for Nursing Excellence and Innovation at UCSF Health and an Assistant Adjunct Professor with the Department of Physiological Nursing at UCSF School of Nursing. She supports clinical and advanced practice nurses within the health system to engage in research, scholarship, and evidence-based practice implementation. Her research is grounded in her clinical interest to improve care for frail older patients through systematic change in care delivery. Dr. Yefimova obtained her BSN, MSN and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a graduate certificate in gerontology from the University of Southern California. Her postdoctoral fellowship training followed in the inaugural cohort of nurses in the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA/VA Greater Los Angeles. She was the 2018-2019 Academy Health Delivery Science Fellow, gaining skills in implementation science and learning health systems at VA Palo Alto. Currently, Dr. Yefimova is a co-investigator on multiple NIH-funded projects in dementia caregiving and elder mistreatment.