Nursing Spectrum Selects Rutgers College of Nursing Faculty Member Rachel Jones as One of Five Nurse Excellence Program NY/NJ Regional Finalists in Teaching

(NEWARK, N.J., June 2, 2008) – Rutgers College of Nursing faculty member Rachel Jones has been selected as one of five New York/New Jersey regional finalists in the teaching category for the 2008 Nursing Spectrum Nurse Excellence program.

Sponsored by Nursing Spectrum, a nursing news magazine, the Nurse Excellence Program honors nurses who routinely go beyond their job descriptions in six categories: advancing and leading the profession, clinical care, community care, management, mentoring, and teaching.

From these 30 finalists, six—one in each of the six award categories—will be named as a New York/New Jersey regional winner on June 5 at the New York/New Jersey Nurse Excellence Gala at the Glenpointe Marriott in Teaneck, N.J.  The six winners will go on to the Nursing Spectrum’s national competition.

Jones, assistant professor at the College of Nursing at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, was honored for research into the potential of urban soap opera videos to communicate HIV risk reduction in young adult urban women.

“The stories in the soap opera videos were based on stories told by women in focus groups held in Newark and Jersey City. These focus groups yielded insight into both the problems faced by women in acting to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and the solutions as well. The relationship between individuals and organizations in the community with our team of faculty, students, actors, technology experts and a filmmaker, was essential to achieving this research. It was a labor of love in the fight against AIDS,” said Jones, a Boonton Township, N.J. resident. “I am honored that Nursing Spectrum has selected me as one of the five regional finalists in teaching.”

The acting involved students and graduates of the Rutgers Newark Visual and Performing Arts Department, as well as professional actors. All filming took place in neighborhood settings. The videos were created for viewing on small hand held computers. This approach was tested in a randomized controlled trial that was conducted in public housing developments and the STD clinic in Jersey City, and in downtown Newark. All aspects of the work involved nursing students from the Rutgers-Newark campus as well as young men and women from Newark and Jersey City.

She and her team, composed of Alan Roth, an independent documentary filmmaker, Robert Nahory, a digital application developer at Rutgers-Newark Dana Library, nursing students, performing arts students and graduates from the Rutgers-Newark campus, technology students, and people from the community, created a 43-minute soap opera video and several shorter videos aimed at reducing HIV risk in inner city women. The research was funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

The heroines in the videos are young adult African-American and Latina women acting with awareness of new choices to promote health. Recently, her team created a web site to promote access to the videos at www.stophiv.newark.rutgers.edu. Interested persons can view the videos and learn more about this research to reduce HIV/AIDS through soap opera dramatization.

Jones has been honored for her innovative HIV/AIDS research.  Jones was recently awarded the New York Times Tribute to Nurses Educator of the Year Award and the Zonta Club of Essex County as Woman of the Year. She was also selected as the first recipient of the Rutgers-Newark Provost’s Community Engagement in Research Award.

From its headquarters at Rutgers Newark, Rutgers College of Nursing offers a broad range of academic programs on all three Rutgers campuses. The college offers a master’s program with unique practitioner specialties, a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree, and the first to offer a Ph.D. nursing degree in New Jersey.

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