Faculty

Linda H. Bearinger, PhD, RN, FAAN, FSAHM
Professor and Director
Linda H. Bearinger, PhD, RN, FAAN, is Professor and Director of the Center of Adolescent Nursing, offering master's and doctoral preparation. Dr. Bearinger also served as the Director of Training for the post-graduate interdisciplinary Adolescent Health Training Program in the Medical School of the University of Minnesota; she continues as the nursing director of this interdisciplinary program. Dr. Bearinger has lectured nationally and internationally in areas of adolescent development and sexuality, and counseling and program development strategies for youth. She has served on the adolescent health expert panels for the National Institutes of Health and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, U.S. Public Health Service. Her research focuses on longitudinal studies of adolescent risk and protective factors, particularly related to sexual health. Over the past six years, Dr. Bearinger led a research team that completed a longitudinal study of urban American Indian young people. E-mail address: beari001@umn.edu

Jayne Fulkerson, PhD
Associate Professor
Focusing on child and adolescent eating habits in relation to family mealtime and obesity prevention, Dr. Jayne Fulkerson, associate professor, became a welcome addition to our center in 2007. With her diverse array of research interests in child and adolescent health including weight-related issues, mental health, and instrument development, Fulkerson brings a new dimension of adolescent health to our center. As co-director of the Center for Children and Family Health Promotion Research, Fulkerson is currently working to prevent obesity and excess weight gain in youth through several NIH-funded grants. Her most recent intervention, Healthy Offerings via the Mealtime Environment (HOME), concentrates on increasing family meals and improving the quality of food (e.g., increasing fruit and vegetable consumption) in the homes of families with children. She is currently working on a new study of mealtimes in preschool children. Dr. Fulkerson's research interests center on risk and protective factors in the development of eating disorders and mental health among children and adolescents, along with family-based health promotion.
E-mail address: fulke001@umn.edu

Carolyn Garcia, PhD, MPH, RN
Assistant Professor
Stress and coping among Latino adolescents, reducing barriers to accessing culturally meaningful healthcare services, and employing family-centric, school-based interventions are just a few areas Dr. Garcia is committed to undertaking as a assistant professor in the Center for Adolescent Nursing. Garcia is currently conducting research on determining the effectiveness of a school-based coping intervention for Latina adolescents. With experience using mixed-method study designs, Dr. Garcia has also implemented the use of "photovoice " allowing community-based participants the ability to physical show causes, effects, and services related to the research study. Garcia is also a Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH) K12 scholar, which offers her extensive protected time to develop her program of research, focused primarily on developing a school-based coping preventive intervention for Latina youth.
She is committed to undertaking collaborative research that translates into policy, practice, and education areas. To this end, Dr. Garcia collaborates with researchers addressing access to care barriers at the system level. Current projects include considering the effects of uninsurance on the Latino community, and evaluating differences between cultures in their assessment of health care quality, particularly the quality of care for adolescents.
E-mail address: garcia@umn.edu

Elizabeth Lando-King, PhD, RN
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
E-mail address: land0191@umn.edu

Barbara McMorris, PhD
Associate Professor
Prior to joining the Center for Adolescent Nursing in 2008, Dr. McMorris worked as a research scientist/director in academic and business settings including the Seattle Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington, the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research at Iowa State University, and i3 Innovus, a United Health Group company. One of her proudest accomplishments was successfully fielding adaptations of the Communities that Care Student Survey to almost 6,000 students in grades 5 through 10 in Washington State and Victoria, Australia as part of a NIDA-funded international collaboration to compare the development of youth substance use in the two countries. In addition to mentoring students and fellows on the research design and statistical analyses, Dr. McMorris conducts research focused on the risk and protective factors in adolescent development and the prevention of alcohol and drug use, delinquency, violence, and teen pregnancy.
E-mail address: mcmo0023@umn.edu

Linda Olson Keller, DNP, RN, FAAN
Clinical Associate Professor
Dr. Linda Olson Keller is the developer of the Public Health Nursing Intervention Wheel, a practice-based, evidence-supported model that is used nationally and internationally. The model depicts how public health nurses improve population health through interventions with communities, individuals, and systems. She teaches advanced public health nursing to Master's students and also advises Doctor of Nursing Practice students on their Capstone projects. Dr. Olson Keller recently completed a national effort that established a recommended public health nurse to population ratio that is based on a task analysis of public health nursing activities. This work was funded by the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Olson Keller recently received a new HRSA grant that will facilitate the development and adoption of evidence-based public health nursing practice guidelines in local and tribal health departments and schools of nursing throughout the state of Minnesota. Working with and mentoring Center for Adolescent Nursing students, Olson Keller has a wealth of public health nursing knowledge that students can access.
E-mail address: olson173@umn.edu

Sandy Pettingell, PhD
Research Associate
Dr. Pettingell is a statistical and research methodologist in the Center for Adolescent Nursing. While creating survey instruments, managing data, running and interpreting statistical analyses on several different faculty engaged research projects, Pettingell also consults and advises center graduate students on a variety of projects. In addition, she also serves as adjunct faculty at Bethel University, where she teaches graduate level statistics, research methodology, and sits on student committees. She also provides services as an independent statistical consultant. Research interests for Dr. Pettingell include risk and protective factors, violence, sexual health, and behavior among adolescents, with a focus on urban American Indian youth.
E-mail address: erick100@umn.edu

Renee Sieving, PhD, RN, FSAHM
Associate Professor
An Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, Dr. Sieving plays a dual role as the Deputy Director for the Healthy Youth Development - Prevention Research Center. Showing particular interest in substance use and sexual health and violence prevention among young people and how it relates to family, peer groups, and individual-level influences on these health outcomes, Dr. Sieving is an essential part of the Center for Adolescent Nursing. She recently received a $3 million grant to fund a project called: Prime Time: Healthy Teens, Healthy Futures which will track girls in an 18-month health promotion and youth leadership program. Dr. Sieving's research specialties focus on the promotion of healthy youth development and the prevention of multiple health risk behaviors (sexual risks, violence involvement, school drop-out) among adolescents, also focusing on improvement in contraceptive use and pregnancy prevention among at-risk adolescent girls.
E-mail address: sievi001@umn.edu