February 24, 1997
Nancy Woods named UW School of Nursing’s associate dean for research
Dr. Nancy Fugate Woods, director of the University of Washington School of Nursing’s internationally known Center for Women’s Health Research, has been named the school’s associate dean for research, effective March 1.
In announcing the appointment, Dean Sue Hegyvary wrote: “This position is critical in the school, and Nancy is eminently qualified for it. The search committee said, ‘If Nancy weren’t already here, we’d extend this search to go out and get her.'”
Woods is a former chair of the Department of Family and Child Nursing, as well as the founding director of the Center for Women’s Health Research. She has been a School of Nursing faculty member since 1978. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Wisconsin State University in Eau Claire, a master of nursing degree from the UW, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Since the mid-1970s, Woods has provided leadership in developing women’s health as a field of study in nursing science. Her early research focused on the relationship of women’s social environments and their health, emphasizing the consequences of women’s multiple roles and social supports for health. Since she joined the UW faculty, Woods has led several large research projects on women’s perimenstrual symptom experiences.
With colleagues at the UW, she established the Center on Women’s Health Research in 1989 to study women’s health across the lifespan.
Her current research focuses on mid-life women, their health and health-seeking behavior patterns. She has been especially interested in women who may experience threats to health due to age, ethnicity, multiple roles and socio-economic status.
Woods has been president of the American Academy of Nursing, and was a member of the Women’s Health Task Force for the National Institutes of Health and of the Advisory Council for the NIH Center for Nursing Research. She was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine in 1993.
As associate dean, she succeeds Dr. Marie J. Cowan, who left the UW to accept a position as dean at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Nursing in January.
