Cathy Penn, RN, CRRN, MA

Cathy has clinical expertise in tertiary level of prevention with inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation settings. As a board member of a seven county chapter of the Iowa Head Injury Association, she focused on community reintegration of individuals with brain injury. She also facilitated support groups for individuals and family members following brain injury and spinal cord injury.

Cathy and Sharon Guthrie redesigned and taught a population based senior level nursing course. Within this course Cathy collaborated with the county public health department and a county asthma reduction coalition to start an in-home education program for children and teenagers with asthma. BSN students provided the education.

Cathy was inspired by The Educated Citizen and Public Health: A Consensus Report on Public Health and Undergraduate Education (2006), a call to introduce all undergraduate students to public health education. She created a public health course (Cities, Sewers and Shots) for freshmen students not majoring in health care so that more college graduates would understand how health is shaped by their social and physical environment and how they need to use this information as an educated voter, employee, and consumer.

Other professional interests include evidence based nursing practice and quality and safety in nursing education.