Sharing Her Strength

Meet public health powerhouse Kristi Brownlee

Photo: Scott Fricker

Kristi Brownlee lights up when she talks about her younger sisters, ages 16, 12, and 3.

“They are the apples of my eye, the loves of my life,” she says. “It’s always been in my heart to try to be a role model for them. It’s hard enough being an African-American and being a woman, so if I can do just one thing to make my sisters’ paths a little bit smoother, then everything I do is worth it.”

Her own path from public high school in Memphis, Tennessee, to the University of Miami had some boulders.

“During the day, I would fill out college applications and draft personal statements,” she said during her address to attendees of this year’s UM Scholarship Donor Recognition Luncheon. “At night, I would secretly flush the Percocet tablets my mother abused down the drain and assure my sisters that our current circumstances were temporary.”

At her guidance counselor’s insistence, Brownlee applied for the Gates Millennium Scholarship. She got it, and others.

“Despite not knowing anyone upon my arrival, this University—its faculty, its staff, its culture of excellence, and its pride—made me feel like I was a part of the winning team,” recalled Brownlee.

At UM, she also found a sense of belonging. She joined the Yellow Rose Society, a service group focused on women’s empowerment and unity; the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship organization; and President Julio Frenk’s Presidential Task Force to Address Black Students’ Concerns, ultimately helping to develop diversity and implicit biases recognition trainings for students, faculty, and staff.

Now in the graduate phase of her public health dual-degree program at the School of Nursing and Health Studies, Brownlee is researching prevention interventions for adolescent substance abuse.

For her, the connections are critical. “I wouldn’t have been equipped to pursue addiction research if it weren’t for the time I spent helping my mother overcome hers,” she says. “If it weren’t for my exposure to racial and health disparities, being from an underserved neighborhood, I wouldn’t have been compelled to promote cultural competency and strengthen the inclusive nature of UM as a member of the Black Students’ Concerns working group.”

She has also come to see why people and organizations invested in her future—the way she is invested in the future of her sisters.

“I was chosen to be here because each and every twist and turn, each and every experience, each and every opportunity—it led to where I am today,” she explains. “It’s the reason my story resonates with people. I didn’t know it at first. My story? Me? I’m not important. But I get it now. All of that, it was for a reason.” —Robin Shear

The post Sharing Her Strength appeared first on University of Miami: Miami Magazine.

Photo by Donna Victor

Safety in Numbers: Nurse’s Studies Save Lives

As a teen on mission trips in the Dominican Republic, Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda, Ph.D. ’08, was horrified to see that preventable deaths were plaguing the country’s most disadvantaged. Helping nuns and rural nurses in providing social and health services to underserved communities inspired her to study nursing and public health.

As a nursing and international health student at Georgetown University, Gonzalez-Guarda conducted research in the Hispanic community of Washington, D.C. “It was even more appalling to see those health disparities in my own community, in my own country,” recalls the assistant professor at the School of Nursing and Health Studies. “That shifted my interest—I wanted to make an impact in my own community before moving globally.”

In 2008, after attaining a dual-degree master’s at The Johns Hopkins University in community health nursing and public health, the Miami native earned her Ph.D. in nursing, epidemiology, and psychology and joined UM’s faculty.

She began to study the intersection between substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, and intimate partner violence among Hispanic women. Quickly learning that violence was the foremost concern, Gonzalez-Guarda worked with Miami-Dade County’s Coordinated Victim Assistance Center (CVAC) and Community Action and Human Services Department to create a program called JOVEN—Juntos Opuestos a la Violencia Entre Novios (Together Against Dating Violence). It is one of their studies being evaluated as a way to stop domestic violence at its source—by teaching teens healthy dating and relationship norms and giving them, their parents, and teachers the skills to stop unhealthy behaviors early on.

Gonzalez-Guarda is also collaborating with CVAC as the lead evaluator for the Miami-Dade County team of a groundbreaking multi-city effort, funded by the federal Office on Violence Against Women. The goal is to test two evidence-based domestic violence homicide prevention models in diverse communities across the nation. Preliminary studies have shown the use of a danger assessment tool and intervention strategies effective in identifying victims at risk and reducing homicides.

Gonzalez-Guarda is eager to pass on her passion for research to her students. “I want to break the stereotype that research puts you away from the action, from being with patients,” she says. “In fact, it can be used to bring you closer to them.”

— Emily Mirengoff, M.A. ’14

The post Safety in Numbers: Nurse’s Studies Save Lives appeared first on University of Miami: Miami Magazine.

Planned simulation hospital could lead to safer practices

State-of-the-art simulation exercises are already part of the curriculum at the School of Nursing and Health Studies. The R. Kirk Landon Challenge will help fund a top-notch nursing facility devoted to such training.

A prominent challenge gift from a South Florida philanthropist will help the School of Nursing and Health Studies build one of the nation’s first education-based facilities dedicated to simulation training. The R. Kirk Landon Challenge will match all donations of $50,000 or more, up to a total of $1 million, toward the construction of a five-story, 39,000-square-foot facility to be used to replicate the real-life flow of activities in a clinical practice and hospital setting.

Landon and his life partner, Pamela Garrison, share a dedication to UM’s nursing school and its innovative health care education and research. Garrison, a retired recovery room nurse, is the school’s Momentum2 campaign co-chair and has volunteered in multiple leadership roles at the school. “The School of Nursing and Health Studies has a powerful vision for improving health care through advanced education and research,” says Landon. “What we accomplish together will have widespread impact today and for generations to come.”

The simulation hospital will enable students and professionals to work with standardized patient actors and simulators that mimic detailed symptoms and respond to interventions. Interdisciplinary teams of nurses, physicians, physical therapists, and other health care professionals also will use the facility to research patient safety protocols and test new health care products. Celebrating its 65th anniversary, the nursing school continues to be at the forefront of health care innovation. Most recently the school received a federal grant to launch Florida’s first anesthesia doctoral degree—one of only 16 such accredited programs in the nation aimed at addressing a national shortage of nurse anesthetists. For more information call 305-284-1892 or email [email protected].

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