Brown Wins Award for Research in Minority Health

The Southern Nursing Research Society selected Emma "E.J." Brown, associate professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Central Florida, to receive its 2004 Award for Research in Minority Health. She received the award during the society's annual meeting, Feb. 18-20 in Louisville, Ky.

Brown began her research on women and minority populations after receiving her doctorate from the University of Florida in 1993. Since then, she has established herself as a prominent behavioral researcher targeting minority and rural populations. She works at a research site in rural north Central Florida where she has direct access to her target populations. Brown is currently the recipient of a National Institutes of Health grant titled, "Ethnography: Drug Use among African-American Women in Rural North Florida," which reflects her research focus on HIV and drug abuse prevention and intervention among African-American women.

Brown has published her research findings and methodology of recruiting and retaining these vulnerable research subjects in a variety of top scholarly journals. Her publications and presentations reach out to nurses and other health-care workers.

Her work provides "attention to important societal problems that few researchers have been willing to tackle," wrote Ruth Harris of the University of Maryland, in a recent review of Brown's research.