Linda H. Cronenwett (center) with Tina Evans (left) and Rebeca Moretto (right), the 2011 recipients of the Cronenwett Global Study Award.

The Cronenwett Global Study Award was created by a private gift from a SON alumna and her husband to honor the leadership of Linda H. Cronenwett, immediate past dean of the SON, and her passion for improving quality and safety in health care. This year’s recipients are BSN students Tina Evans and Rebeca Moretto. They will both be traveling internationally this summer as part of N489, SON’s Practicum in Nursing Global Health Experience.

Evans will spend four to five weeks in Antigua, Guatemala volunteering at Casa Jackson, an inpatient center for malnourished children. She then plans to spend six to seven weeks in Jutiapa, Guatemala, where she will work on the nursing staff in the maternity department of the Hospital Nacional de Jutiapa. She will also introduce the work of doulas to their maternity care in an effort to increase natural comfort measures in laboring women.

Moretto will be collaborating with two obstetric attending physicians in the high-risk OB/GYN department at the Antigua, Guatemala/Hospital Nacional. She will be assisting them by acting as a doula to the women and helping with deliveries. In addition, she will conduct public health education outreach for the traditional midwives in the area regarding topics including sterile technique and postpartum care of mother and newborn.

You can contribute to the Cronenwett Global Study Award at https://secure.dev.unc.edu/gift/son/.

Melissa LeVine and Gail Johnson in the LeVine Wellness Spot

School of Nursing employees now have a dedicated room in which to exercise and learn healthy habits. The LeVine Wellness Spot on the third floor of Carrington Hall officially opened with a kick-off luncheon and ribbon cutting on January 4.

Gail Johnson, an administrative support associate in the Family Health Faculty Division, had the idea for the Wellness Spot and was able to bring her idea to fruition thanks to funds that remained from a gift to the SON from Melissa LeVine in 2000. LeVine received her BSN from SON in 1977 and her MSN in 1981.

LeVine did not designate the specifics of the gift’s use as long it was applied to faculty and staff wellness. “As advocates of health care and of good health, we cannot ask our patients to do healthy things if we’re not doing it ourselves,” LeVine said. “My long range vision was that as the faculty and staff improve their healthy behaviors and health status it would make them more effective in communicating healthy behaviors with patients and that this would ripple out to the whole state of North Carolina.”

Video: Watch as Gail Johnson talks about activities for the Wellness Spot and Melissa Levine gives somes words of wisdom about exercising.

For the official opening, faculty and staff joined LeVine in enjoying a healthy salad bar, and then LeVine and Dean and Alumni Distinguished Professor Kristen Swanson cut the ribbon to open the LeVine Wellness Spot.

Faculty and staff kicked off the opening of the LeVine Wellness Spot by contributing items to make a delicious salad bar.

Johnson has equipped the room with free weights, exercise balls, steppers and resistance bands, a large flat-screen TV, and a variety of exercise DVDs. Employees can even work out using Nintendo Wii video games. “I wanted to do something to help people who needed to learn healthy habits and how to prepare their foods,” she said.

After seeing the room, LeVine said that it lines up brilliantly with her vision. “The idea of a dedicated room is great. I glanced through the DVDs — there are many ways to get your heart-rate up and they are really fun,” she said.

The room will be open during typical work hours, with no reservations taken. “It is meant to be open and flexible, with as few rules as possible,” Johnson said. “The only scheduled activities will be instructor-led classes such as yoga or Zumba.”

Johnson will make use of the SON’s rich resources by organizing short 15 to 20 minute lectures from faculty. These talks will center around eating habits and the proper way to prepare foods. “There will even be cooking demonstrations in wellness room,” she said.

Team competitions with prizes will help get SON employees involved and add a fun factor to exercising. “We want to provide everyone with journals as well as tape measures so that they can track exercise, weight and inches lost,” Johnson said.

Although wellness programs and facilities exist at UNC, many of those programs have associated fees. The LeVine Wellness Spot and its programs will be free and are aimed specifically at meeting the needs of SON employees.

There will be even more to come. Johnson has plans to promote wellness by helping employees with smoking cessation and to purchase balance boards and kettle ball weights to add to the exercise equipment.

Gifts to the LeVine Wellness Fund are welcome. Contact Norma Hawthorne (Norma_Hawthorne@unc.edu) to make a donation.

See more pictures from the event on our Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/unc_ch_son/sets/72157625747820934/

Landon entered the School of Nursing in 1952 as part of the second BSN class in the state.  When this group of outstanding students graduated in 1956 they were at the vanguard of nursing education in the State of North Carolina.  They set an example and became role models for future Carolina nurses.

Over the years, Landon has enjoyed the camaraderie and friendships with her classmates that could have developed only through the shared experiences of living and studying together in the nurse’s dorm, guided by Dean Elizabeth Kemble.  After graduation, Landon worked in pediatric nursing.  She married Tom Fox, a graduate of the UNC School of Medicine.  They lived in Charlotte, NC, where Tom practiced psychiatry and Landon volunteered at family-oriented, non-profit organizations.  The Foxes have three married daughter.

Now, the couple has retired to Chapel Hill and enjoy many University alumni and athletic activities.  Tom serves as a Director of the School of Nursing Foundation, Inc. and Landy volunteers in the community.

When you see Tom and Landy, please give them your heartfelt thanks for their love and support of our School.

Family, friends and community where shocked and heartbroken.  They came together and with a modest amount of funds, established a memorial scholarship to carry Martha’s name forward.  It took ten years for the fund to grow sufficiently to begin to payout support.  Each year, since that time, the Holts have made small gifts and we are incredibly grateful to them.  Today, the fund is able to help underwrite a portion of the $5,000 tuition for a School of Nursing undergraduate student to attend and become the Martha Holt Windham Scholar.

Our visit was important.  It gave us an opportunity to say thank you and to honor Martha’s memory.

Martha's Nursing Cap

John Wilson, Anneka Huegerich, Anne Wilson

The power of this scholarship fund is extraordinary.  In five years, we have made awards of $25,000 to support four Katherine Wilson Scholars.

Please visit https://s4.its.unc.edu/ALDevCPS/Type_Of_Gift.jsp?cmpn=QOQ&org=SON to make a gift online.

To have your end-of-year gift credited to 2009, please ensure the envelope is post-marked by Dec. 31, 2009.

We were in Charlotte this week hosting an alumni event and continuing education program at the Levine Children’s Hospital at Carolinas Medical Center. After remembering Eve and her contributions to our UNC family, alumni approached me to ask, “How can we make a contribution in memory of Eve?” Here is a link to the online giving page at University Development to make a gift in Eve’s memory. Thank you for your generosity and for keeping a place for Eve Carson in your heart. -Norma Hawthorne

Donors to the SON’s Community Partnerships and Practice Fund to make this trip possible are Paul Chused, Valerie Ann Stafford-Fox, Alpha Alpha Chapter/Sigma Theta Tau, Inc., Linda Trembath Reeder, Harriet Walker Buss, Jo-Anne Trowbridge Martin, Diane Snakenburg Gordon, Anonymous, Sharon Hill Price, Rebecca Dodson, Margaret McCain, Ann Marie Polk, Melissa Dixon LeVine, Carolyn Cook Spalding, Denise Taylor Darden, Shelby Dunivant, Anne Fishel, and Nancy B. Freeman. Individual gifts ranged from $25 to $1,000, demonstrating how important grass roots support can be.

Novant HealthCare/Forsyth Medical Center, a Source of Caring sponsor for the April 2008 International Human Caring Conference in Chapel Hill, has such a commitment, which is why they are participating. So does Carolinas Healthcare System in Charlotte, a Hands of Caring sponsor. They join UNC Healthcare, the major co-sponsor of the conference along with UNC-Chapel Hill School of Nursing. Other sponsors are Alpha Alpha Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society, Florida Atlantic University, and Kindred Healthcare.

You can get the entire conference program at: http://nursing.unc.edu/iahc

There will be more than 70 presentations and 20 posters that focus on topics such as religion, spirituality, and end-of-life; theory, ethics and aesthetics; and practice and systems. Research about human caring outcomes, as well a keynote addresses by major thought leaders from around the world will inspire, excite and give practical information that attendees can take back to their work environment.

Some specific presentations are about fostering compassionate patient care, integrative healing modalities, postpartum depression, therapeutic touch, critical care nursing, healing for obesity, heart failure and other chronic illnesses, international nursing, caring and burnout, job satisfaction and organizational support, developing a theory of healing through touch.

While the conference is centered around nursing practice, many of the presenters come from other related fields, such as social work and psychology.

Conference sponsorships at several levels are still available.

Why are samples of cortisol needed? Individuals under chronic stress have been shown to have decreased cortisol reactivity which is related to adverse health outcomes. The Carolina SON research team is studying how the fear of recurrence for younger breast cancer survivors results in a pervasive sense of a less controllable world, thereby, potentially increasing their uncertainty about cancer recurrence, which may constitute a form of chronic stress.  Chronic stress is known to weaken the immune system.

About 178,500 women in the United States were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007; of this group, approximately 25 percent will be under 50 years of age. In the first four years following treatment, pre-menopausal women under 50 have a high recurrence rate and an increased likelihood of a second primary tumor. Uncertainty about how to interpret and handle symptoms leads to excessive worry, avoidance of symptoms or somatic vigilance. There has been little research on young survivors during the period of extended survival. Therefore, it is important to test interventions to help these women control their symptoms and manage the uncertainty about recurrence, and improve their quality of life.

There is some evidence that the impact of a breast cancer diagnosis is greater on African-American survivors and they experience more energy loss, sensory and sleep problems, pain and mental distress. African-American breast cancer survivors have rarely been included in intervention studies. This study, however, includes a significant sample of this group.

The Managing Uncertainty in Cancer Patients (MUIC) team has designed and tested a succesful intervention for older breast cancer survivors (mean 64 years of age) who were 5-9 years post treatment. This is currently being distributed by the National Cancer Institute as a model intervention program. The link is: http://rtips.cancer.gov/rtips/rtips_details.do?programid=82&topicid=12&co=n&cg=

The link will go to “RTIPs Program Use Agreement.” Please click accept button below to continue. Click on the “Product” image to download documents or to order a CD.

Most pre-menopausal women also experience an intense reponse to treatment induced premature menopause, including debilitating hot flashes, mood and sleep impairment, memory impairment, sexual dysfunction, and fatigue, yet little information from physicians is offered to help them with these treatment issues. The nursing intervention developed by MUIC places a greater focus on calming self-statements and cognitive restructuring to enhance the benefits of the intervention, which can be practiced by women on their own at home, with a self-help guide manual that can be used on as as-needed basis.