A Luncheon Event
Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 am
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Proceeds from this event will go toward advancing the education, research and practice missions of the OU College of Nursing.

Keynote Speaker: Loretta Sweet Jemmott, PhD, RN, FAAN
2009 Frances E. and A. Earl Ziegler Visiting Scholar

Honoring the Class of 1959
Saturday, April 4, 2009. at 10:00 am
David L. Boren Student Union

Walking tour of campus following brunch.

Register for the brunch online.

Marilyn Rantz, PhD, RN, NHA, FAAN

Presented by the Donald W. Reynolds
Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence
March 25-26, 2009

Dr. Rantz will be visiting the Tulsa & Oklahoma City campuses.
Visit the Reynolds Center of Geriatric Nursing website for more info.

If you’ve ever had a baby, you might remember some of your prenatal care appointments. Do you remember sitting in a crowded waiting room waiting while the doctor was at the hospital delivering a baby? Maybe you struck up a conversation with another mom-to-be but then never saw her again?

Centering Pregnancy, a new model of group prenatal care, is out to change that scenario. With Centering, moms, who are due at about the same time frame, have a common prenatal appointment and participate in their own care by weighing themselves, taking blood pressures, checking urine and even listening to the fetal heart tones. The practitioner sees each mom “on the mat” for a few minutes to discuss any concerns and assure fetal growth is proceeding on course. Then all the moms (partners are invited too) meet together to discuss a planned program of topics including common problems during pregnancy, eating health during pregnancy or contraceptive options. Rather than a formal class taught by an instructor, the sessions are facilitated by the leader (usually a nurse practitioner, nurse midwife, or other nurse) who draws out from the mothers what they know about the topic and through the group provides updated and accurate information. Centering Pregnancy is a model originated in 1994 by Dr. Sharon Schindler Rising from Centering Health Institute. This model has demonstrated improved perinatal outcomes including decreased prematurity and increased birth weight of infants , even if born prematurely. Other outcomes include increased satisfaction with care by the moms, increase feelings of support and increased practitioner satisfaction with care they provide.

In an effort to promote improved birth outcomes in our state, the Oklahoma Chapter of March of Dimes awarded a grant to Dr. Beverly Bowers ‘93 in December, 2007 to establish a Centering Pregnancy Resource Center (CPRC) with the goal to educate practitioners about Centering Pregnancy and provide support to practitioners in getting the model established within their practice. The CPRC also provides monthly practitioner support meetings for the participating sites. Four sites across the state were recruited and have been providing Centering Pregnancy Care since summer of 2008. The sites include OU Physician- Nurse Midwives in Tulsa, Emerson Teen Clinic in OKC, Pontotoc Health Department in Ada and Reynolds Army Community Hospital in Lawton. In 2009 the March of Dimes renewed the grant to expand the program to two additional sites. Dr. Bowers is the Primary Investigator(PI) and Kathryn Konrad and Theresa Steckel are the co-PIs. A research project to evaluate the outcomes of the program is also in progress. For more information about Centering Pregnancy, please contact Dr. Beverly Bowers at (405)-271-2062 or Beverly-Bowers@ouhsc.edu.

OUCN's own Gary Loving PhD, RN, CNE was featured in the February 23, 2009 issue of the Oklahoma's Nursing times.

Click here to view the article.

OU College of Nursing is proud to welcome our 2009 Frances and Earl Ziegler Visiting Scholar, Dr. Loretta Sweet Jemmott who is the van Ameringen Professor in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing and Director of the Center for Health Disparities Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Dr. Jemmott is a noted nurse researcher in the areas of HIV-AIDs prevention. She and her husband Dr. John B. Jemmott III, have been funded for more than 92.5 million dollars for research programs by the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute for Nursing Research (NINR) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Research has included 24 HIV risk-reduction randomized controlled trials in various settings, including schools, community based organizations, housing developments, clinical settings, and churches. Three of her evidenced-based adolescent HIV risk-reduction intervention curricula were selected by CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health Program entitled, "Research to Classrooms, Program That Work!" for dissemination to schools, community based agencies, and clinics nationally and internationally. These curricula have been culturally adapted, tailored and translated into various languages for use in regions where HIV is at pandemic levels, including counties in Africa, South America, and the Caribbean.

The outcomes of her research include:

a) a reduction in HIV risk-associated sexual behavior
b) a reduction in the frequency of sexual intercourse
c) a reduction in unprotected sexual intercourse
d) a reduction in the number of sexual partners
e) an increase in condom use
f) a decrease in unprotected sex; and
g) biological outcomes showing a reduction in the incidence rate of STD at 12-month follow-ups.

She will be meeting with faculty and students and several presentations are planned. She will also be presenting at the Oklahoma Statewide Research Conference on April 3 at Cole’s Gardens and will be keynote speaker at the Power of Nursing Luncheon at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.  See the Visiting Scholar web site for more information.