Barbara Medoff-Cooper, PhD, RN

Barbara Medoff-Cooper, PhD, RN is Professor Emerita in the Family and Community Health department at the Penn School of Nursing. After completing a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Nursing Scholars Post-doctoral fellowship from 1984-1986 at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Dr. Medoff-Cooper joined the faculty as an assistant professor in neonatal nursing. In 1996 Dr. Medoff-Cooper was promoted to the rank of Professor and assumed the position as Director for the Center for Nursing Research, which she continued 2005. In 2005 Dr. Medoff-Cooper was appointed to the Ruth M. Colket Chair in Pediatric Nursing at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the first endowed chair for nursing in a children’s hospital Dr. Medoff-Cooper, is national and internationally known expert on developmental outcomes, feeding behaviors and infant temperament in high risk infants. Her 6th and newest NIH study uses state of the art telehealth technology for home monitoring infants who have experienced neonatal cardiac surgery. This study has the potential to change the paradigm of home monitoring care for extremely vulnerable populations. She is the author of over 70 journal articles and numerous book chapters. She is the first author on the Early Infancy Temperament Questionnaire (EITQ), an instrument used around the world to measure behavioral style in infants from 1 to 4 months of age. With a patent pending, Dr. Medoff-Cooper is a co-inventor the Neonur, a feeding device which allows researchers and clinicians the ability to objectively measure feeding behaviors in neonates and young infants. Dr. Medoff-Cooper has served on many reviews groups for NIH and is currently the chair of a national task force to develop protocols for the care of the late preterm infant, sponsored by the Association of Women Health and Neonatal Nursing.