A world-class city filled with art and culture and an incredible campus that offers cutting edge resources–that’s what students receive at Penn Nursing. And that’s just the start. Penn Nursing and the wider university offer something for everyone, as well as a lifelong community.
Penn Nursing is globally known for educating dynamic nurses—because our School values evidence-based science and health equity. That’s where our expertise lies, whether in research, practice, community health, or beyond. Everything we do upholds a through-line of innovation, encouraging our exceptional students, alumni, and faculty share their knowledge and skills to reshape health care.
Penn Nursing students are bold and unafraid, ready to embrace any challenge that comes their way. Whether you are exploring a career in nursing or interested in advancing your nursing career, a Penn Nursing education will help you meet your goals and become an innovative leader, prepared to change the face of health and wellness.
Penn Nursing is the #1-ranked nursing school in the world. Its highly-ranked programs help develop highly-skilled leaders in health care who are prepared to work alongside communities to tackle issues of health equity and social justice to improve health and wellness for everyone.
Penn Nursing’s rigorous academic curricula are taught by world renowned experts, ensuring that students at every level receive an exceptional Ivy League education. From augmented reality classrooms and clinical simulations to coursework that includes experiential global travel to clinical placements in top notch facilities, a Penn Nursing education prepares our graduates to lead.
Biobehavioral Health Sciences
How can we use what we learn about the lives of patients to improve our ability to care for them? In the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences (BHS) we look at physical, psychosocial, and behavioral health from multiple perspectives, including biological, social, political, and historical.
About the Department
Nancy A. Hodgson, PhD, RN, FAAN Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor in Nursing Chair, Biobehavioral Health Sciences
Our mission
The mission of the BHS Department is to apply our expertise in conceptual and empirical methodologies to enhance patient care through physical, psychosocial, and behavioral health interventions. The BHS Department faculty use multiple perspectives to advance scientific knowledge, including biological, sociocultural, political, ethical, and historical to our research, practice, and interdisciplinary education. As an underlying framework, the Department is committed to social justice in promoting health equity, diminishing disparities, and upholding the ethical principle of respect for persons in all aspects of patient care, teaching, research, and service.
Finding new solutions
We approach healthcare from all angles, bringing cultural awareness and environmental variables into the patient care discussion. Our teaching methods focus on how biological, behavioral, and sociocultural factors influence health care and patient outcomes.
Biobehavioral Health research is in high demand today and covers such topics as health behaviors, genetics and epigenetics, chronic disease, bioethics, global health, physiological processes, environmental exposures, and health disparities.
Developing healthcare leaders
We mentor and support our community of scholars and strive to develop leaders who use their knowledge to enhance patient care, symptom management, and the health of the public.
Life becomes very complex for patients who need to manage pain due to cancer or other illness while still receiving methadone treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). Methadone is a highly effective medication for treating OUD, however, the current U.S. regulatory framework mandates that methadone for OUD is exclusively accessible through federally approved Opioid Treatment Programs, with many individuals required to make daily visits for supervised dosing. This requirement places a significant burden on those with competing health needs, limited access to transportation, living in rural areas or in regions with few or no treatment programs.
Penn Nursing, with partners from the Annenberg Virtual Reality ColLABorative and New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing, have been awarded 2023 grant from the Hillman Emergent Innovation: Serious Illness and End of Life program to study the use of social virtual reality (VR) in enhancing the treatment experience and reducing loneliness in people undergoing hemodialysis. This grant is awarded by The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation.
Penn Nursing and Annenberg School for Communication Partner with Camden County to Launch Virtual Reality Narcan Training
Last year, 354 people died from opioid overdoses in Camden County, according to the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, which in 2022 recorded an estimated 15,407 administrations statewide of naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan. This year, New Jersey launched an initiative allowing anyone 14 and older to anonymously obtain naloxone for free at more than 600 participating pharmacies across the state. Camden County, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, has also installed secure NaloxBoxes in every public school.
NIH Grant for Innovative Study Using Patient Verbal Communication to Detect Deterioration in Heart Failure Patients in Managed Long-Term Care
To improve the quality of care and reduce healthcare expenditures, heart failure patients in the U.S. are increasingly being treated in community-based programs such as managed long-term care. Although early identification of patients’ risks of negative outcomes, including hospitalizations or emergency department visits, has been shown to prevent these adverse outcomes in settings including hospitals and nursing homes, it has not been studied in managed long-term care.
Four Penn Nursing professors have been selected for new fellowships from national organizations in their respective fields. Congratulations to José A. Bauermeister, Diane Spatz, Abigail Howe-Heyman, and Dawn Elizabeth Bent.
