PhD student chosen for competitive training program
About the training program
PhD student Pia Pauline Lenon was selected for the Scholars for Applied Research and Impact (SARI) program, a competitive, one-year training initiative supported by the National Institute of Nursing Research.
The program supports two nationally recruited cohorts of 15 nurse scientists to participate in 12 months of training. It’s based at Villanova University’s M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing, in partnership with Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Howard University College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences.
Through the program, Lenon will be matched with a mentor to complete a research project and will travel to Villanova University in Pennsylvania for an in-person intensive program this summer. The program covers funding for travel, lodging and other virtual coursework.
The program is designed to help Lenon and the other scholars continue to build their skills to conduct rigorous, impactful research on systemic and institutional factors, such as housing instability, food insecurity, and educational inequities, that affect community health across the lifespan.
Lenon’s dissertation, Characterizing Trauma and Its Impact in the Yurok Tribe, is focused on mental health in an indigenous community. Her advisor is associate professor Kylea Liese.
Lenon says she’s also worked with Liese on maternal health disparities, and her goal is to integrate those to areas in her future program of research, with a focus on perinatal mental health screening and early identification in a rural tribal community.