Jackelyn Boyden, PhD, MPH, RN

Assistant Professor of Nursing, Department of Family and Community Health, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

Department of Family and Community Health

I began my clinical career as a pediatric intensive care nurse. While I loved the challenging yet fulfilling work of caring for critically ill children and their families, I realized that I had limited ability to impact the day-to-day experiences of children and families as they navigated life in the community. I transitioned my practice to the community setting and worked in community-based pediatric residential care and community-based hospice. During this time, I learned about the significant gaps in care that exist for children living with serious illness and their families, including resource limitations, shortages of home-based pediatric providers, and regulations that are not responsive to children’s and families’ needs. My scholarship is informed and inspired by these children and families I have had the privilege of caring for over the course of my nursing career.

Every child living with serious illness and their family, without exception, deserve high quality care in any place they call home. My work at Penn Nursing strives to bring together scholarship and education to advance the care we provide to all children living with serious illness and their families, in their homes and across their communities.

Education

PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2020
MPH, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2011
MS, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2011
BSN, University of Michigan, 2006

Social Justice

Significant gaps in home-based care exist for children living with serious illness and their families, particularly for children and families living in underserved and historically marginalized and excluded communities. Through clinical education and research, Dr. Boyden will continue to work toward helping to advance care in homes and communities for every child living with serious illness and their family.

Teaching

Through her work in clinical education as a hospice nurse educator, Dr. Boyden believes in the value of innovative, inclusive, collaborative education that builds on the strengths of learners across disciplines and academic programs. She brings this teaching philosophy into the classroom here at Penn Nursing, where she will help cultivate the next generation of nurses and nursing leaders that will strengthen the care provided to vulnerable children and families across communities.

Research

Dr. Boyden’s research is centered on the care of children living with serious illness and families in their homes and communities. She has studied the impact of a child’s serious illness on parents and families, as well as families’ priorities for home-based pediatric palliative and hospice care. In addition, she has collaborated with interdisciplinary providers and parents from across the country to develop a measure of family-reported home-based care experiences, named the Experiences of Palliative and Hospice Care for Children and Caregivers at Home (EXPERIENCE) Questionnaire, using innovative quantitative and qualitative methods. Through this work, she has collaborated closely with clinicians to understand how they can use real-time, family-reported information about care experiences to better support children and families at home. Dr. Boyden will continue to build on this work, seeking to advance care for children with serious illness and their families through community-engaged intervention and implementation research.

Opportunities to Learn and Collaborate at Penn Nursing

Over the years, Dr. Boyden has collaborated closely with the Feudtner Lab and the Justin Michael Ingerman Center for Palliative Care at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on her research. She has also worked closely with interdisciplinary palliative care research collaborators across Penn, the U.S., and internationally.

Selected Career Highlights

2022, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) New Investigator Award
2022, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Foundation (HPNF) Emerging Leaders Award
2020, Teaching Assistant Graduation Award, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
2019-2020, Independence Blue Cross Nurses for Tomorrow Project-based Award
2020-2022, National Institute of Nursing Research Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32NR019517)
2018-2020, National Institute of Nursing Research Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Predoctoral Fellowship (F31NR017554)
2019-2022, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association, Research Advisory Committee
2022-2023, Chair, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Nursing PhD Community\

Boyden, J.Y., Hill, D.L., LaRagione, G., Wolfe, J., Feudtner, C. (2022). Home-based care for children with serious illness: Ecological framework and research implications. Children, 9(8):1115. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9081115

Nye, R.T., Hill, D.L., Crew, K., Boyden, J.Y., Katcoff, H., Griffis, H., Campos, D., Hall, M., Wolfe, J., Feudtner, C. (2022). The design of a data management system for a multicenter palliative care cohort study. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 64(1), e53-e60.

*Boyden,^ J.Y., Hill,^ D., Nye, R., Bona, K., Johnston, E., Hinds, P., Friebert, S., Kang, T.I., Hays, R., Hall, M., Wolfe, J., Feudtner, C., for the PPCRN SHARE Project Group. (2022). Pediatric palliative care parents’ distress, financial difficulty, and child symptoms. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 63(2):271-282. (PMID: 34425212) ^Co-first authors

*Feudtner, C., Nye, R.T., Boyden, J.Y., Schwartz, K.E., Korn, E.R., Dewitt, A.G., Waldman, A.T., Schwartz, L.A., Shen, Y.A., Manocchia, M., Xiao, R., Lord, B.T., Hill, D.L. (2021). Association of children with life-threatening conditions and parents’ and siblings’ mental and physical health. JAMA Network Open, 4(12):e2137250. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.37250

*Boyden, J.Y., Feudtner, C., Deatrick, J.A., Widger, K., LaRagione, G., Lord, B., & Ersek, M. (2021). Developing a parent-reported measure of experiences with home-based pediatric palliative and hospice care: A multi-method, multi-stakeholder approach. BMC Palliative Care, 20(17). (PMCID: PMC7809872)

*Boyden, J.Y., Ersek, M., Deatrick, J.A., Widger, K., LaRagione, G., Lord, B., & Feudtner, C. (2021). What do parents value regarding home-based pediatric palliative and hospice care? Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 61(1), 12-23. (PMID: 32745574)

*Boyden, J.Y., Hill, D.L., Carroll, K.W., Morrison, W.E., Miller, V.A., & Feudtner, C. (2020). The association of perceived social support with anxiety over time in parents of children with serious illnesses. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 23(4), 529-534. (PMID: 31697175)