UVA Nursing Professor Selected as One of 20 Executive Nurse Fellows Nationwide

Pamela Kulbok, professor of nursing and chair of the Department of Family, Community, and Mental Health Systems in the University of Virginia School of Nursing, has been selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow for 2012. She joins a group of 20 nurse leaders chosen from around the country to participate in a three-year leadership development program.

"Pam's an already strong presence in our school," Nursing School Dean Dorrie Fontaine said. "This can only make her leadership skills even more exceptional."

Kulbok, Theresa A. Thomas Professor of Nursing, has been at UVA since 1992, and is coordinator of the Public Health Nursing Leadership track of the school's Master of Science in Nursing program. She is the principal investigator of an inter-professional, cross-institution research grant and currently serves as the chair of the American Nurses Association workgroup to revise "Public Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice." She is past president of the Association of Community Health Nursing Educators.

"I was delighted to find out that I was accepted to this program, and think it's a wonderful opportunity," Kulbok said. "I hope the skills I obtain from the Executive Nurse Fellows program will enhance my ability to lead and be more involved at the university level and in the inter-professional activities I'm already a part of. I also hope it will help me strengthen and maintain our university's public health nursing leadership track, and encourage our students to advance in public health nursing."

Begun in 1998, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows program seeks to strengthen the leadership capacity of nurses who aspire to shape health care locally and nationally. The program will provide Kulbok and her colleagues with coaching, education and other support to strengthen their abilities to lead teams and organizations in improving health and health care.

The program is located at the Greensboro, N.C.-based Center for Creative Leadership, which also has centers in Colorado, California, Belgium and Singapore. It is co-directed by Linda Cronenwett, the Beerstecher Blackwell Term Professor and former dean of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and David Altman, executive vice president of Research, Innovation and Product Development at the Center for Creative Leadership.

"Now more than ever, with our health care system preparing to care for millions more patients, many of whom are living longer but with more chronic conditions, we need nurse leaders who are well prepared to participate as full partners in this historic transformation," Cronenwett said. "The RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows program has a proud history of building and enhancing the leadership skills of extraordinary nurses all across the country. We are delighted to be able to work with this new cohort. Each of our new Executive Nurse Fellows has made a powerful commitment to improving health and health care and is poised to become an even more effective leader."

Executive Nurse Fellows hold senior leadership positions in health services, scientific and academic organizations, public health and community-based organizations or systems, and national professional, governmental and policy organizations. They continue in their current positions during their fellowships, and during the fellowship each develops, plans and implements a new initiative to improve health care delivery in her or his community.