Posted: 1/29/2010
Martha N. Hill, PhD, RN, Dean of the School of Nursing and Professor of Nursing, Medicine, and Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University, has been named an honorary member of Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society. Alpha Omega Alpha confers honorary membership on physicians and scientists in recognition of their extraordinary contributions to medicine. In the society’s 107-year history, Dr. Hill is the first nurse to receive this honor.
In granting this honorary membership to Hill, Alpha Omega Alpha acknowledges her work in integrating scholarship with patient, provider, and system-level interventions to improve care and outcomes for vulnerable and underserved populations, particularly among young, urban African-American men. Since 1984, she has received financial support for more than 20 research studies, and remains an active investigator, mentor, and consultant on NIH-funded clinical trials. Hill’s research in health inequalities led to her selection as Co-Vice Chair of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Health Care.” This significant work has influenced national policy and clinical practice to improve outcomes for high-risk minority populations.
As the first non-physician to be elected president of the American Heart Association (AHA), Hill led the organization in expanding its focus on basic science to include population science. In 1997, the AHA Council of Cardiovascular Nursing renamed its New Investigator Award, which recognizes the outstanding contributions of investigators in understanding, preventing, and treating cardiovascular diseases, as the Martha N. Hill New Investigator Award.
A Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and a member of the IOM of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Hill has consulted on hypertension in Australia, China, Israel, Scotland, South Africa, and Uganda. She currently serves on several review panels, editorial boards, and advisory committees, including the Board of Directors of Research! America.