Katherine Finn Davis
2003-2004 NEF Awardee
Ms. Davis is currently a third year PhD student at the Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. Her training is in pediatrics and she has a special interest in the immunologic consequences of sleep disturbances and sleep loss and the resultant effects on health outcomes. She also has an interest in the underlying genetic basis of immune system function. She is presently conducting pediatric sleep research to investigate the potential relationship between sleep disturbances and upper respiratory infections and ear infections in preschool-aged children attending daycare.
At present, Ms. Davis has two articles to be published in the Journal of Pediatric Health Care about normal sleep and common sleep problems in children. Ms. Davis is also very active in the Atlanta community, giving requested presentations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and local daycare centers on the topics of pediatric sleep and infectious illness. She was recently interviewed by the American Medical Association and the CBS news affiliate in Chicago regarding her research. Additionally, Ms. Davis has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and honors during her doctoral student tenure, such being awarded the Nurses Educational Funds Scholarship and being invited to participate as a Summer Genetics Institute Fellow at the National Institutes of Health.
Ms. Davis became interested in combining her three areas of research (immunology, sleep, and genetics) during her years practicing as a pediatric nurse practitioner in the field of otolaryngology. She recognized that some children were more susceptible to chronic infections than other children and became determined to investigate the behavioral and biological differences that may influence the immune system of young children. In her search, both sleep and genetics emerged as two areas in great need of further investigation and potential keys to improving the health of children.
Ms. Davis began her nursing career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning her BSN in 1994. She was awarded a MSN degree combined with a pediatric nurse practitioner specialty in 1997 from Emory University. At present, she has successfully completed her doctoral coursework and has begun her dissertation study.
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