Staff
Geiger-Brown | Johantgen | Johnson | Kauffman | Lipscomb | McPhaul | Trinkoff
Director
Jane Lipscomb, PhD, MS, BSN, FAAN, RN, received her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Lipscomb is a Professor and Director of the University of Maryland School of Nursing Center for Work and Health Research. She has an extensive research career in academia and the federal government. She has conducted research on the health and safety of health care workers for over twenty years. She began her research career as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was assigned to NIOSH where she conducted outbreak investigations of suspect occupational toxins. Since joining the faculty at the University of Maryland in 1997, she has been awarded four NIOSH R01s and one R21. Dr. Lipscomb spent three years as a Senior Scientist in the Office of the Director of NIOSH. At NIOSH, Dr. Lipscomb assisted in the development and implementation of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA). From 1989 to 1994, Dr. Lipscomb was an Assistant Professor at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) School of Nursing and Principal Investigator and Director of a NIOSH-funded Occupational Health Nursing training program.
Associate Director
Jeffrey V. Johnson, PhD, Professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Nursing (Family and Community Health) and the School of Medicine (Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine), is the Associate Director of the Work and Health Research Center. He also teaches Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He received his PhD in Behavioral Sciences with an emphasis in public health sociology and social epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He has worked at the University of Stockholm, the WHO Psychosocial Stress Research Center and at the National Institute for Psychosocial Factors and Health in Sweden and at OSHA and the Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. His research on the long term effects of work stress on heart disease was jointly funded by U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Swedish Work Environment Fund and helped to establish that organization of work exposures, specifically control over the work process, and social support in the work setting are significant risk factors for cardiovascular disease. As either a principal or co-investigator Dr. Johnson has performed studies on the impact of organization of work on stress, burn out, job satisfaction, back injuries, psychogenic illness, health behaviors such as smoking and sedentary behavior, and more recently occupational violence and needle stick injury. He has worked closely with international agencies, such as the U.N.’s International Labor Organization, the WHO, and the European Community, as well as governmental institutions in the United States, Canada, Spain, and Sweden, to translate the results of scientific research into changes at the policy and workplace level.
Core Faculty
Kathleen M. McPhaul, PhD, MPH, BSN, RN, received a PhD in Occupational Health Nursing from the University of MD at Baltimore. Dr. McPhaul is an Assistant Professor and an occupational health nurse specialist with over 15 years experience in practice and research at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. In Fall 2004, she began coordinating the undergraduate Community Health Nursing course. At the University of Maryland Occupational Health Project (1991-1999), she participated in a NIEHS-funded effort to provide OH training to medical students (1992- present). While there, she also coordinated a variety of clinical programs and research projects resulting in partnerships and relationships with state agencies such as Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH) and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH). She also worked with federal agencies, local community colleges, and local and international unions as a safety and health advisor and trainer. She was the project manager of “Evaluation of OSHA Violence Prevention Guidelines in Mental Health” (PI, Jane Lipscomb) and co-investigator on “Workplace Violence Intervention Evaluation” (PI, Jane Lipscomb). Her dissertation project was a R-21 pilot project funded by the CDC titled “Workplace Violence Risk in the Home Health Workplace.” Dr. McPhaul is also Co-PI on the NIOSH-funded R01 grant titled “Blood Exposure and Primary Prevention in the Home Care Workplace.”
Alison Trinkoff, ScD, MPH, BSN, RN, received a ScD in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Trinkoff is a Professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. Her formal classroom teaching experience includes teaching at all levels, undergraduate, masters, and doctoral. She has been conducting occupational health research since 1991. Her funded R01s include a NIDA grant, "Substance use in registered nurses," two NIOSH-funded grants entitled “Extended Work Schedules & Workplace Injury in Nurses”, and an AHRQ funded study “Do Organizational Factors Influence Both Patient & Worker Safety,” and MSD: Organizational and Physical work factors." This study examined the relation of HCW injuries (registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, nurse aides/technicians) to staffing, profit status, teaching status, and patient outcomes in hospitals and nursing homes. Worker's Compensation and First Report of Injury data were linked at the facility-level to staffing and patient outcome data for over 500 nursing homes and acute care hospitals. Findings indicated that staffing levels were significantly related to HCW injury rates in nursing homes across 3 states (Trinkoff et al., Am J Public Health, 2005). Her recently completed longitudinal survey on extended work schedules contained important findings showing that work schedules were related to neck, shoulder and back MSD incidence. Schedule components significantly related to MSD included long work hours, mandatory overtime, working while sick or on days off, and with less than 10 hours between shifts (Trinkoff et al., AJIM, 2006). Newer findings indicate that schedule factors are related to incident and prevalent needlesticks (Trinkoff, Le, ICHE, 2007).
Jeanne Geiger-Brown, PhD, MN, BSN, BA, RN, received a PhD in Nursing Science from the University of MD at Baltimore, and a Master’s in Adult Psychiatric Nursing from Columbia University in New York. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing, a researcher and psychiatric clinical nurse specialist. Her current research interest is in the effect of sleep deprivation on functioning as it relates to the work schedules of health care workers. She is currently studying trends in neurocognition over successive 12-hour shifts in critical care nurses. In addition, she was the co-investigator on several recent NIOSH R-01’s including a study of work organization and health among home health workers (Muntaner, PI), and an incidence study of needlestick injuries and musculoskeletal disorders in registered nurses working extended work schedules (Trinkoff, PI). She is also active in several of Dr. Lipscomb’s studies, including a study of workplace violence among social service workers, a two-state intervention study to reduce blood exposure to home care RNs and home health aides, and a study of co-worker violence in multiple state agencies in a large Northern US state. She teaches multivariate statistical methods in the doctoral program. Her background in evaluation and statistical analysis makes an important contribution to the research-training portion of this project.
Meg Johantgen, PhD, MS, BS, RN, received a PhD in Health Services Organization and Research from Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University and is an Associate Professor at UMB SON. After completing doctoral course work, Dr. Johantgen became a service fellow at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) where she studied quality of health care using administrative data. She helped design the first version of quality indicators for use with hospital discharge data, now used by many states and private organizations. Dr. Johantgen’s data expertise was essential in obtaining and carrying out an AHRQ-funded study using secondary data to examine the relationship between nurse staffing and patient outcomes in nursing homes and hospitals. She teaches research methods in Masters, Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), and PhD programs. In light of her data and organizational expertise, Dr. Johantgen has served as a dissertation chairperson for numerous SON PhD students and she has been a dissertation committee member for other students in the SON and in the Public Policy Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Karen S. Kauffman, PhD, MSN, BSN, CRNP, RN, received a PhD in Nursing with emphases in Gerontology and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kauffman is the Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Community Health in the University of Maryland School of Nursing. Dr. Kauffman is an ANCC certified Gerontological Nurse Practitioner and maintains a private practice as a long-term care consultant for older adults and their families in the community. Dr. Kauffman is an ethnographer and has conducted numerous ethnographic inquiries as well as serving as a qualitative research consultant on many grants. She has taught and guided students, both graduate and doctoral, in qualitative research methodologies and in designing and implementing qualitative research. Dr. Kauffman served as Co-Investigator on the NIOSH funded study: “Blood Exposure and Primary Prevention in the Home Care Workplace” (Lipscomb, PI) and has published several articles with the Work and Health Research Center.
Coordinator
Joan Kanner, MA, received a Masters in Child/Adolescent Clinical Psychology from Montclair State University. Ms. Kanner is currently Coordinator for the WHRC as well as the Department of Family and Community Health Nursing. She serves as Project Administrator on the NIOSH funded studies “Blood Exposure and Primary Prevention in the Home Care Workplace” (Lipscomb, PI) and “Evaluation of Organizational Justice Intervention to Alleviate TYPE III Violence” (Lipscomb, PI). She has over seven years of administrative and grant management experience, and has worked clinically with developmentally disabled adults and college students.