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J. Margo Brooks Carthon to Receive Distinguished Researcher Award

LDI Senior Fellow Cited for Her Contributions to Nursing Scholarship

January 6, 2025

By:

Hoag Levins

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LDI Senior Fellow and Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing J. Margo Brooks Carthon, PhD, RN, has been named recipient of the 18th annual Claire M. Fagin Distinguished Researcher Award. Recognizing distinguished contributions in nursing scholarship, the award is named for the late Claire M. Fagin, a pioneering figure in nursing education and leadership who opened the country’s first center for nursing research at Penn in 1980. The award presentation will take place at a ceremony in April.

Brooks Carthon is widely regarded as a thought leader in the area of nursing workforce diversity and has been instrumental in the creation of national policies to address diversity and inclusion in nursing education. She is the nursing school’s Endowed Term Chair for Gerontological Research and Associate Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR).

National Model of Care

A project that evolved from a 2018 pilot research grant from the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI), Brooks Carthon’s Transitional Health and Social Needs Resources to Improve Health Equity and Value (THRIVE) program has become a national model of care addressing the complex needs of Medicaid-insured patients transitioning from hospital to home. The model, which reduced disparities in care experienced by low-income individuals with multiple chronic conditions, received the American Academy of Nursing’s 2024 Edge Runner award. That honor recognizes innovative, nurse-designed interventions that demonstrate significant impact on health care.

Center for Nursing History

A faculty member at the Penn School of Arts & Sciences Department of Africana Studies, Books Carthon was also recently named the new Director of the nursing school’s Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. Established in 1985, the Center is one of the world’s largest repositories of primary secondary source materials and rare book related to the history of nursing. The center applies data and insights from nursing’s past as part of the larger process of improving nursing now and in the future.

Brooks Carthon received her MSN in Psychiatric and Adult Health from the University of Pittsburgh, and her PhD in Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania. She is also an alumna of the Robert Wood Johnson Nurse Faculty Scholars Program, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.