College of Nursing Researcher Dr. Debra Moser Receives Prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr. Debra Moser received the 2022 Heart Failure Society of America Lifetime Achievement Award, the highest award given by the society. She is only the second nurse to receive this award. The award was given in recognition of her distinguished career as a nurse scientist that has earned her an outstanding international reputation and resulted in major contributions to improved outcomes of patients with heart failure and related cardiovascular diseases. Over her 30-year career, she has served as a primary or co-investigator on grants totaling over $40 million and has published over 450 manuscripts. Dr. Moser has been the recipient of numerous other honors and awards. Among these are some of the highest honors awarded in the nursing profession including the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research President’s Research Award, the Katherine Lembright Award from the American Heart Association, induction into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, and induction into the American Academy of Nursing.
Dr. Moser’s program of research has focused on promoting self-care with an interest in the interface of psychological, social, and behavioral variables on their impact on morbidity and mortality outcomes. Since joining the University of Kentucky faculty as the Gill Endowed Chair of Cardiovascular Nursing, she has championed research directly related to UK’s mission to improve the lives of the people of Kentucky by addressing the state’s significant health disparities. To accomplish this, Dr. Moser’s research includes the impact of socioeconomic and environmental factors on health outcomes, particularly in communities that are socioeconomically austere with extraordinary cardiovascular disease disparities.
Using a community-engaged approach in rural Appalachia, her research group has studied interventions to reduce cardiovascular risk factors, both traditional (e.g., lipids, activity levels) and non-traditional (e.g., depression, fatalism, health literacy) in multiple sub-populations including individuals with advanced heart failure and their caregivers, prison inmates, and rural dwellers at high risk for cardiovascular disease. The interventions address multiple comorbidities including hypertension, diabetes, obesity, sedentary life-style, hyperlipidemia, smoking, unhealthy eating patterns) and depression. Her most recent study supported by $2.8 million grant from PCORI addresses the stigma associated with seeking treatment for depressive symptoms in people living in the rural parts of eastern Kentucky. The study is also designed to address accessibility, another important barrier to mental health treatment, by providing access to treatment in people’s homes.
Dr. Moser’s impact is truly world-wide. She has collaborated with investigators across 9 countries including Australia, China, Scotland, South Korea, Sweden, and Taiwan. She has held appointments as Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; and as visiting professors at Trinity College, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Dublin, Ireland; the University of Western Sydney, School of Nursing; the College of Health and Science, Sydney, Australia; Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia; and the University of Stirling, Scotland.
