In 2022, I was fortunate to be part of the inaugural cohort for the Environmental Health Research Institute for Nurse and Clinician Scientists (EHRI-NCS). The fellowship was an invaluable experience for me as I was in my transition year of wrapping up my PhD studies and moving into my faculty position. One comment I received after my “job talk” during my faculty interview was that they seldom see an early career candidate who has given so much deep thought to the ten-year trajectory of their research program. That comment was a direct byproduct of the career cartography work we did as fellows of EHRI-NCS, under the leadership of principal investigator Dr. Jessica Castner and faculty. You can imagine my sheer delight when I received the call from Dr. Castner a year later inviting me to support the institute as a junior faculty for the analytics portion of the workshop! Last week, I assisted the core faculty in facilitating the 2023 workshop. The event was hosted at Emory University.

During the three-day workshop, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Gaea A. Daniel and hear about her research, as well as tour the Emory school of nursing bio-labs. All participants went and visited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta campus. My neighborhood researcher heart was overjoyed to hear about some of the work being done to better understand Healthy Communities at the CDC. During the final day of the workshop, I enthusiastically listened as Dr. Jeremy Sarnat shared an overview of the work being done at the HERCULES Exposome Research Center. I returned home renewed and excited to resume my work!

Presentation dates: June 12-14, 2023

Presentation location: Atlanta, Georgia

On May 17, Dr. Janessa Graves and I presented the progress and results of our “Antecedents to Geographic Disparities in Mental Health Care Access among Participants Enrolled in the National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program” study. Our presentation was in San Diego!

This nine-month grant is wrapping up on June 30. As an early career researcher, it has been a wonderful experience for me to advance my coding in ‘R’ skills and be mentored through managing an NIH mini-grant. The analysis experience has been a valuable opportunity to learn the nuances and structure of a new national-level database.

On May 7, 2023 I presented a lunch and learn, Addressing the Core Drivers of Escalating Chronic Illness.

For this presentation I overviewed the increasing healthcare cost and provided the perspective of the upstream lens to examine the core drivers of mortality and morbidity. I shared tactics that Community Health Centers can use to engage their geographic neighborhoods in cultivating healthy communities. I closed by sharing the preliminary insights I am gleaning from my inquiry using the All of Us NIH Research Program data. 

Thank you to the AHEC for Western Washington for inviting me!

Presentation location: Seattle, Washington

In the summer of 1999, I was awarded a summer research internship at a neuroscience lab at Washington State University. That summer, I lived with a Veterinary medicine student and a microbiology graduate who was starting medical school the following fall. It was one of the most formative periods of my life. For the first time, I felt like I was meeting my people. I remember once during weekly journal club, I asked a question, and the principal investigator looked at me and said, “Shawna, no one knows the answer to that! Perhaps you would like to spend the rest of your career finding out.” There we stood at the edge of knowledge; it was at that moment my soul knew I would become a scientist someday.

The next 24 years unfolded, and during that time I made countless responsible choices for my family’s benefit. Almost a quarter century later, I know I am late to the party -but here I am! To all of my colleagues who stand on the edge of knowledge daily and push forward, YOU are my people. It is one of my greatest joys in life to work with you!

On April 21, 2023, I was awarded the Harriett B. Rigas Award for outstanding doctoral studies. Hearing all the accomplishments in research that my fellow awardees were making was thrilling. WSU is definitely leaving its fingerprint across many new knowledge frontiers!

Graduate Student Award Recipients

Dr. Janessa Graves and I presented a collection of four posters this week at the Northwest Rural Health Conference, Spokane, WA, March 27-29, 2023.

• Beese, S., Carbone J., Graves JM. Use of the All of Us Research Program to examine allostatic load. Poster presentation, Northwest Rural Health Conference, Spokane, WA, March 27-29, 2023.

• Graves JM, & Beese S. How Rural is All of Us? Identification & representation of rural participants in the NIH All of Us Research Program. Poster presentation, Northwest Rural Health Conference, Spokane, WA, March 27-29, 2023.

• Graves JM, & Beese S. Self-reported mental health status and utilization among rural and non-rural participants of the All of Us Research Program. Poster presentation, Northwest Rural Health Conference, Spokane, WA, March 27-29, 2023.

• Graves JM, Parrott KF, Beese S., Carbone J. Use of the NIH All of Us Research Program Researcher Workbench for Educational and Instructional Purposes. Poster presentation, Northwest Rural Health Conference, Spokane, WA, March 27-29, 2023

Our initial research brief was just released and shared with state legislators and local agency stakeholders. The brief features a timely snapshot of the Washington State (WA) food environment as food assistance post-COVID policy is being settled. It has been an honor to collaborate with the team from the University of Washington (UW), School of Public Health on their fourth wave of the WA Food Security Survey.

Dr. Janessa M. Graves and I presented an overview of the NIH All of Us Research Program as part of the 5th Annual Prevention Science Data Blitz. This presentation was part of the deliverables for our “Antecedents to Geographic Disparities in Mental Health Care Access among Participants Enrolled in the National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program.” Janessa M. Graves (PI), Shawna Beese (Co-PI). American Academy of Colleges of Nursing and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.

Presentation date: December 2, 2022

Other presentations:

• WSU College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (CPPS)  -January 2023
• WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences (CAHNRS); All Extension Meeting-January 2023
• WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine; Community and Behavioral Health faculty meeting (CBH)- February 2023

• WSU CAHNRS, Extension, Youth and Families meeting- February 2023

At the American Public Health Association (APHA) 2022 conference, our Spokane Food Policy Council team presented our poster, Spokane’s Regional Food Action Plan: Development of strategies to achieve Health Food for All. Thank you to our president, Kylie Pybus, for presenting this important work!

Presentation dates: November 6-9, 2022