Prof Shannon Zenk receives FNINR President’s Award for work on big data
body copy Heading link
Shannon Zenk, PhD, MS ’99, MPH, RN, FAAN, Nursing Collegiate Professor, was awarded the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research 2018 President’s Award.
The award was given for her application of “big data” in nursing and healthcare research.
Zenk, a pioneer in food desert research, uses big data research to mine electronic health records from the Veterans Administration, studying the role of residential environment on obesity in more than 3 million adults nationwide. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she is expanding this work to 11 million athenahealth patients across the lifespan.
Her second big data breakthrough involves using GPS technology to conduct minute-by-minute monitoring of people’s movements to more accurately capture their environmental exposures.
Zenk received the award at FNINR’s “NightinGala” on Oct. 31 in Washington, DC.