Marian Morris

Marian Morris is the recipient of the Isabel Hampton Robb Memorial Award. She is currently completing the Alternate Entry-PhD program at The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing.

She received her BA in cultural anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MPH from San Jose State University in San Jose, California. She has worked in direct clinic service (primary care and reproductive health and family planning), reproductive health leadership development training for leaders from developing countries, and in research center administration at the UT-Austin School of Nursing prior to beginning the doctoral program.

Her goal in pursuing a PhD is to work as a doctorate-prepared public health nurse professional such that she is able to operate with a “health in all policies” approach, including consideration of how societal systems and infrastructures contribute to promoting the health (in all senses, physical, mental, and integrated biobehavioral) of children in the short term as well as over the lifespan. Her current studies focus on how, within nursing practice, language structures, beliefs, attitudes, and diagnostic and treatment systems shape the health promotion of children, in the short term but also with lifespan influence. She will consider the implications her findings hold for child mental health nursing policy and practice, including nursing education and care related to child mental health. She hopes to be a part of helping nursing practice and education integrate emerging evidence related to adverse childhood experience, epigenetics, and healing from traumatic experience and toxic stress.