BSN Student Allie Milam Has Tenacity and Grace Under Fire to Win Award at SNRS

It almost didn’t happen for Second Degree BSN student Allie Milam.

Twenty-three other faculty and students were already presenting and/or attending the Southern Nursing Research Society (SNRS) annual meeting in Tampa.

First there was the text message she received during class the day before she was to fly to Tampa to present her own research: “Flight cancelled due to impending snowstorm.” She was rebooked for an 11:30 a.m. flight the next day. That was a problem … she was scheduled to present at 10:30 a.m.

A second rebooking had her hopping in her car to fly out of Louisville, but when she arrived, that flight had been cancelled as well.

This was not looking good.

After chasing a lot of miles on the interstate, she finally was able to get a seat on a flight out of Cincinnati.

The two other UK College of Nursing students presented before she even arrived in Tampa, but her faculty mentor, Associate Professor Gia Mudd-Martin, PhD, MPH, RN, was able to get Milam’s presentation delayed until early afternoon … a mere 30 minutes after arriving at the hotel. Just when Milam thought she could catch her breath, one judge told her she couldn’t stay and another said, “You have six minutes before my next appointment. Go!”

Talk about grace under fire …

Despite all of these obstacles a tenacious Allie Milam came away proud, but surprised, that she had won third place in the student category for her poster, “Tooth Loss Is Associated with Increased Risk for Cardiovascular Disease.”

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Research is what drew Milam back to school to seek a degree in nursing, and Dr. Mudd-Martin suggested she look into research on how periodontal disease affects systemic health. Adding to the body of knowledge in the literature, Milam collaborated with Dr. Mudd by controlling for smoking and diabetes along with other variables and found that tooth loss is still associated with cardiovascular disease.

Milam discovered that an easy, inexpensive public health initiative would be for nurses to go out into a community, do simple oral exams and be able to determine if certain people have a higher risk for cardiovascular disease, as well as educate them on good oral hygiene. During her work she also learned that periodontal disease does not necessarily contain itself in the mouth but can migrate to other parts of the body and can take a serious toll on the heart. 

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Research is one of those fields where tenacity is fundamental to success. And the UK College of Nursing considers a head start in research to be invaluable to success in a PhD program. College faculty members often say that researchers are “grown” beginning at the undergraduate level in the Research Interns Program. Started in 2002 by Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies Patricia Burkhart, PhD, RN, this extracurricular opportunity matches up selected, interested students with faculty mentors who have similar interests.

Dr. Mudd-Martin, Milam’s mentor, says “The role of the research internship is to give undergraduate students an appreciation for research and what it does, and to have the opportunity to consider whether that is something they want to do going forward.” Students interested in public health looked at Dr. Mudd-Martin’s own research work and decided if these areas were of interest to them.

“We walk through the process of how to analyze data and how to interpret what it means,” she adds. “They (the students) do the analyses themselves and we work together on the interpretation of the data. It has been very exciting and they ask questions that I would never have thought of asking. What is so exciting about researchers is that everyone brings a different perspective and asks different questions, and they are all important questions.”

Milam, Dr. Mudd-Martin and Tom Kelly, PhD, associate dean for research, all agree that UK and this college in particular, place a stronger emphasis on undergraduate research than many other schools.

“There are not that many schools that have a research intern program at the undergraduate level that give students an opportunity to understand research through hands-on experience,” Dr. Mudd-Martin explained. “We received comments from a number of faculty members from other schools regarding the fact that this is such a great program.”

Dr. Kelly was especially impressed with the faculty, students and staff as they worked as teams to get posters and other promotional materials ready, then get all of it, the faculty and students to Tampa despite not one, but two unusually large snowstorms, one of which closed the university for four days the week before the conference.

“It reflects the vibrant nature of the research program here in the College. Long before anyone was concerned we’d never make it to Tampa, the vast majority of abstracts we submitted for this prestigious, competitive conference were accepted for presentation. And that includes three students and thirteen faculty,” Dr. Kelly says.

Dean Janie Heath, PhD, APRN-BC, FAAN, agrees. “This was such a big success for our faculty, our students, and the College’s research program and Undergraduate Research Intern option as a whole. I must have been the happiest dean at the conference because I know the quality and effort we put forth there to share the important work we do in the research arena to improve the health of Kentuckians and beyond.”

Faculty and Students Who Presented at the 2015 Conference

Faculty Presentations

• Demetrius Abshire – “Waist Circumference is a Marginally Better Predictor of Blood Pressure in College Students Compared to Sagittal Abdominal Diameter and Body Mass Index”  
• Kristin Ashford – “Systemic Impact of Maternal Stress and Prenatal Tobacco Use on Immunologic Changes Early in Pregnancy”
• Maria Gomez – “Assessing everyday stressors in a sample of women attending prenatal care” (with Drs. Ashford and Linares)
• Janie Heath – “Scaling Up Successes for Research Funding through Philanthropy:
• General Symposia for Academic Settings” (with Drs. Hahn and Ashford)
• Janie Heath – “Electronic Cigarettes: Knowledge and Perceptions Among Acute and Critical Care Nurses”         
• Terry Lennie – “Finding Postdoctoral Training Opportunities from Other Mechanisms”
• Ana Marie Linares—“Intention to Breastfeed and Exclusive Breastfeeding in Hispanic Women”    

Student Presentations

• Linda Clements (Dr. Chung’s student) –“The Mediator Effects of Depressive Symptoms on the Relationship Between Family Function and Quality of Life in Caregivers of Patients With Heart Failure”          
• Corinna Hughes (Dr. Ashford’s mentee) – “Cytokines and Psychosocial Properties Throughout Early Pregnancy in African-American Women”                                                     
• Lisa Jones (Dr. Burkhart’s former student; now a professor at EKU) – “Evaluation of a Social Support Intervention to Promote Adherence to Recommended Diabetes Treatment in an Employer-sponsored Health Program: A Retrospective Chart Review”
• Allie Milam (Dr. Mudd-Martin-Martin’s student) – “Tooth Loss is Associated with Increased Risk for Cardiovascular Disease”
• Jennifer Miller (Dr. Moser’s student) – “A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study of Gender Disparities in Symptoms of Anxiety, Depression and Quality of Life in Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator Recipients"       
• Cynthia Morris (Dr. Hardin-Fanning’s student) – “Providers’ Perceptions of Meaningful Use Mandates”  
• Allie Patrick (Dr. Abshire’s Undergraduate Research  Intern) – “Residing in Economically Distressed Appalachia Is Independently Associated With Abdominal Obesity Among College Students”       
• Shannon Shumaker (Dr. Frazier’s doctoral student) – “Depressive symptoms predict self-care in patients with heart failure”                             
• Christina Thompson (Dr. Ashford’s student) – “Determining the Effect of Anxiety and Stress on Total Weight Gain During Pregnancy” (oral poster discussion)                           
• Tracey Vitori (Dr Frazier’s doctoral student) – “The psychometric properties of the BSI Hostility and Anxiety Subscales in a Prison Population”                                           
• Katie Voigts (Dr. Mudd-Martin-Martin’s student) – “Parental History of Hypertension Increases Personal Risk of Hypertension”