She has participated in interdisciplinary research through Fairfield University’s Integrative Nursing and Health Studies Initiative, where she directed a team of undergraduate research assistants and supervised doctoral-level coursework and undergraduate theses. She has extensive research and clinical experience and has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. She received her bachelor of science in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania; her PhD from the University of California, San Francisco; and she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the John A. Hartford Foundation, which she completed at the University of California, San Francisco.