UB researchers named fellows of American Academy of Nursing

School of Nursing faculty members Yu-Ping Chang and Sharon Hewner have been named fellows of the American Academy of Nursing (AAN).

AAN fellows are recognized for their contributions to nursing and health care, and their influence on health care policy. Honorees include government administrators, college deans and scientific researchers from 29 countries.

Chang and Hewner, along with other distinguished nurse leaders in the 2018 class of fellows, will be recognized at the AAN 2018 Transforming Health, Driving Policy Conference on Nov. 3, in Washington, D.C.

“We are delighted that these two talented, accomplished researchers will be inducted as fellows into the American Academy of Nursing,” says School of Nursing Dean Marsha Lewis, who was inducted as an AAN fellow in 2013.

“The impact of their research nationally and internationally is clearly evident in this AAN fellowship, an elite group including approximately 2,500 nurse leaders (of more than 3 million professional nurses in the U.S.) who have been recognized by their peers as accomplishing extraordinary milestones in their nursing careers. Drs. Chang and Hewner join a number of faculty in the UB School of Nursing who are fellows of the academy.”

Chang, the Patricia H. and Richard E. Garman Endowed Professor and associate dean for research and scholarship in the School of Nursing, focuses her research on mental health, prescription drug misuse and addictions in older adults, and caregiving and medication management for individuals with dementia.

Studies she led have found that more than 90 percent of people caring for a family member with dementia experience poor sleep quality, that college education is linked to opioid misuse among baby boomers, and that motivational interviewing is an effective tool at curbing opioid misuse in older adults.

Chang is also a fellow of the Health Sciences Section of the Gerontological Society of America. She earned a doctorate in nursing from Saint Louis University, and both a master’s degree in psychiatric and mental health nursing and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Kaohsiung Medical University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Hewner, associate professor of nursing, concentrates her research on transitions of care, and health services and informatics. Her research includes the discovery that post-discharge telephone calls may reduce hospital readmission rates for high-risk patients, and development of an automated discharge summary that could quicken communication between hospitals and primary care physicians from weeks to hours.

She is the recipient of the 2013 Elsevier Exceptional Nursing Educator Award, and was named the 2012 Nurse of the Year in Performance Management, Quality and Improvement by the March of Dimes.

Hewner earned a doctorate in anthropology from UB, and both a master’s degree in gerontological nursing and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Rochester.