Filmmaker, Photographer, Author Delivers Annual McGehee Lecture at Nursing School

An award-winning documentary filmmaker will screen portions of her soon-to-be-released documentary, “The American Nurse Project: Healing America,” at this year’s Catherine Strader McGehee Memorial Lecture at the University of Virginia School of Nursing. The lecture is scheduled for Wednesday at noon in the school’s McLeod Hall Auditorium.

Author, photographer and film director and producer Carolyn Jones works to bring the stories of compelling people, groups and issues to life with real purpose and vision. She’s followed girls who speak their minds; families of strong, connected women; Americans living with HIV and AIDs and the families that orbit around them; and – most recently – embarked on a journey to tell some of the varied stories of American nurses, and the power and nobility of their work and purpose.

“The American Nurse Project” began as a book in 2010 but evolved into a multimedia site offering more than 100 video testimonials from American nurses about how and why they do what they do, and what it’s like. Among Carolyn’s interviewees was U.Va. nursing doctoral student Hershaw Davis, then an emergency room nurse in urban Baltimore.

The author of “Living Proof: Courage in the Face of AIDS” (1994) and “The American Nurse Project” (2012), Jones has collaborated with a range of corporate partners, including Oxygen Media, PBS and the Girl Scouts of the USA, and is the founder of the 100 People Project. She works and lives in New York City.

“The American Nurse Project: Healing America” will open in Washington, D.C. during National Nurses’ Week in early May.

The annual McGehee Lecture celebrates the life and work of 1975 Nursing School alumna Catherine Strader McGehee, who died of breast cancer in 1999 in the midst of her doctoral studies in the school. The lecture was endowed in 2002 in McGehee’s memory by her family and the BSN class of 1975.

A reception will follow Jones’ hourlong lecture.

Media Contact

Christine Phelan Kueter

School of Nursing