Michigan Area Health Education Center Names Co-Director

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DETROIT — The Michigan Area Health Education Center has named Wanda Gibson-Scipio to serve as co-program director.

Gibson-Scipio, assistant professor in the Wayne State University College of Nursing, will replace Ramona Benkert, who served as co-program director for three years.
 

Gibson-Scipio is a researcher, an educator, and a family nurse practitioner. In addition to conducting research and teaching in the primary care nursing program, she also continues in her practice role as a family nurse practitioner at Advantage Family Health Care, a Federally Qualified Health Center. Before joining the faculty at Wayne State University, Gibson-Scipio was the program director for the family nurse practitioner program at Oakland University School of Nursing. She has also held key leadership positions locally with the Allergy and Asthma Foundation of Michigan and nationally with the American Thoracic Society. She earned her master’s degree in primary care nursing from Wayne State University and her doctorate from Michigan State University.

Gibson-Scipio’s research focuses on the use of mobile technology to help address health disparities among African-American youth with asthma. She was awarded a $70,000 grant from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation to explore end user recommendations for the development of an asthma transition readiness mobile application for African American youth. She is also a co-investigator on the Detroit Young Adult Asthma Project, a, NIH-funded pilot study of an intervention using technology (text messaging and computer) to target adherence to asthma controller medication in African-Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.