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2022 – 2023 Environmental Health Nurse Fellowship Mentors Announced!

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2022 – 2023 Environmental Health Nurse Fellowship Nurse Mentors Announced!

The Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments is proud to announce the 2022 – 2023 Environmental Health Nurse Fellowship Nurse Mentors.  

This Fellowship is designed to train nurses to work with communities in tackling serious environmental health issues, with an emphasis on climate and health equity. This program brings together 24 nurse leaders from across the nation, who will join a growing nationwide network of nurse leaders who work in partnership with communities to enhance mitigation of and adaptation to climate change and related environmental health challenges, while ensuring the health benefits of these efforts are realized in the communities. Fellows are paired with nurse mentors to support their journey through the program.

The 2022 – 2023 Environmental Health Nurse Fellowship Nurse Mentors are:

Azita Amiri, PhD, RN

Dr. Amiri is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, College of Nursing. She is a nurse researcher with an interest in indoor air, environmental health, and environmental justice. She measures indoor air quality by simulating residential and occupational settings in her lab and studies the common indoor air exposures, their concentrations and sources, and their impact on pregnancy outcomes, child health, and well-being of elderly.

Adelita Cantu, PhD, RN, FAAN

Adelita has worked in public health for over 35 years and focuses on strategies to reduce health disparities among vulnerable populations. She has also been involved with ANHE for over 10 years and has used what she has learned from and with the organization to empower vulnerable communities around the connection between health and the environment and how they can mitigate their exposure to multiple environmental health threats.

Teresa Dodd-Butera, PhD, RN/DABAT

Dr. Dodd-Butera is a board-certified toxicologist (Diplomate, American Board of Applied Toxicology/ DABAT). She holds a Doctor of Philosophy, Concentration: Arts and Sciences, with a specialization in Molecular Toxicology and International Health; and two Master’s degrees – MSN, Nurse Educator Concentration; and MS in Public Health, Concentration: Toxicology. Her research focus is on acute and chronic exposures in pregnancy and placental toxicology. Research investigations include biomarkers, glutathione-S-transferase (GST) genotypes, and birth outcomes from environmental exposures to lead, cadmium, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons in an obstetric population in Baja California. She is also interested in multiple factors that affect global and national maternal-child and family health issues, including families with special needs. She has traveled to Mexico, Ireland, South Africa, and Vietnam for educational and research interests. Before joining Azusa Pacific University as a public health faculty member, her leadership positions included serving as Co-Director for the Center for Health Equity, Assistant Director of the BSN program, and Graduate Coordinator for the MSN program at CSU San Bernardino. Her teaching and mentorship experience is multidisciplinary, including: nurses, physicians, pharmacists, toxicologists, and graduate and undergraduate public health students.

Catherine Graeve, PhD, MPH, CNE, BSN, PHN

Catherine Graeve is an Associate Professor and Interim Program Director for a holistically certified Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program at St Catherine University in Minnesota, where she has taught community and global health, holistic care of older adults, mental health, and pharmacology.  She previously worked as a hospice and hematology/oncology nurse.  Her research has included work on how the environment impacts children’s health from before birth, chemotherapy safety for healthcare workers, advance care planning, and quality of life surrounding menstrual symptoms in individuals from various ethnicities. She co-chairs the Minnesota Cancer Alliance Policy Committee. She has been engaged in ANHE for many years, and loves being a part of the important work they do!

Christine Fasching Maphis, DNP, PMHN-BC, FNP-BC

Christine Fasching Maphis is a full time faculty member in the School of Nursing at James Madison University. She holds practice credentialing and expertise in Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing and as a Family Nurse Practitioner and recently transitioned from practicing in a community based crisis stabilization unit to providing virtual behavioral health and substance abuse services. She combines her passion and role as an educator and advocate with her research and interests in holistic population and planetary well-being, social justice, quality care, ethics, and empowering nurses to practice to their full professional scope and standards to serve the multiple communities with which she interfaces. She is certain that “knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do”.

Kathy Murphy, MSN, Ed.D, RN, CHSE

Kathy received her nursing degree from St. Mary’s Hospital School of Nursing, Associate Degree from Mattatuck Community College, Bachelor’s Degree from Southern Connecticut State University, Master’s Degree in Science and Doctorate in Education from the University of Hartford. Doctoral thesis topic: The Confidence of New Nurse Graduates in the Application of Environmental Health in the Nursing Process.

Dr. Murphy has experience in pediatrics, labor and delivery and community nursing. She is a Professor of Nursing at Naugatuck Valley Community College (NVCC), adjunct faculty at Charter Oak State College where she developed a course focused on climate change and adjunct faculty at the University of Hartford where she teaches a course Environmental Health and Nursing. Dr. Murphy has publications and conference presentations on environmental health and climate change.  She is an active member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, co-chair of the Education Forum and Steering Committee member.

Aaron Salinas

Aaron, DNP, APRN,FNP-BC,PMHNP-BC, NRP is a board certified Family Nurse Practitioner and Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. Having earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Texas-Pan American and a Masters of Science in Nursing from the University of Texas at Brownsville Aaron began his nursing career as an emergency room nurse in South Texas at a level 3 trauma center. It is with his emergency department experience that he felt the need to continue with his higher education and received three post masters certificates and completed his doctoral education from  Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. In addition , he was part of the first Environmental Health Nurse Fellowship with the Alliance of Nurses for Health Environment and will now be serving as a Nurse Mentor.

Charlotte Wallace, MS, RN

Charlotte Wallace, MS, RN has a master’s degree in Community & Public Health Nursing.  In 2007, Charlotte initiated an environmental health team, who were the first acute care hospital in Maryland to achieve lead certification.  In 2013, Becker’s Hospital Review recognized them as “50 of the Greenest Hospitals in America”.  Charlotte is proud of her advocacy work, including banning arsenic in chicken feed and fracking in Maryland.  Her clinical background includes almost two decades in pediatrics.  She currently is a community health nurse at Luminis Health, Maryland where she focuses on reducing health disparities, specifically in lower economic, black, and brown communities. In January 2021, she developed and launched one of the nation’s first mobile COVID vaccination clinics; reducing the language, immigration status, transportation and technology barriers to care. Charlotte is committed to upstream solutions to improve the health of all.

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