Basic Information

Name: Charlene Pope
Title: Chief Nurse for Research
Institution: Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System
Discipline: Nursing
Years of experience: 49

Research

Primary methodological research approach:

• Health literacy
• Minorities / disadvantaged population
• Patient–provider relationship
• Communication

Focus of research in communication and healthcare:

• Implementation research
• Microanalysis of face-to-face dialogue
• Mixed methods
• Observational studies
• Participatory learning and action
• Qualitative methods
• Discourse analysis

Description

Three keywords describing expertise and interest:

1. Patient-provider communication
2. Health disparities

Description of field of expertise, major interests, and consultation topics:

After 25 years of advanced nurse practice as a nurse midwife, I am trained as a health service researcher who uses sociolinguistics to study variations in communication, in how patients and health providers speak with one another, and in racial/ethnic/linguistic disparities as a mixed methods and qualitative methodologist. In that role, I decode written and spoken texts and study the relationship of speaking practices to clinical and health service outcomes as mechanisms of disparities. I have collaborated with multidisciplinary health and social science teams integrating communication components into studies of health services and community-based disparities (dual VA and non-VA health service use, lung cancer screening, group motivational interviewing of homeless Veterans and in national multi-site studies of hypertension control, traumatic brain injury (TBI) at a Veterans Affairs (VA) health center. My experience with communication research collaborations includes proposals, funded grants and published reports that reach across age groups and medical conditions. My qualitative methodology experience with interviews and focus groups using content analysis, grounded theory and discourse analysis offers variations for collaboration.

Brief biography:

I grew up in a multi-lingual, single parent family in inner city Baltimore where I learned how to juggle poverty. I’ve been working since I was 15, not counting earlier years helping my grandmother work in restaurant kitchens. I trained originally as a nurse (49 years ago) and have worked on inner city streets for the Public Health Department in Baltimore, Maryland and in hospitals. I returned to school to study midwifery and get an MPH, including an assignment on the Navaho Reservation. My motivation was dissatisfaction with the care I saw offered to women in obstetrics and gynecology. I have since worked at a University in Rochester, New York as faculty, and on international assignments (Cambodia, Somalia, Mali 4 times, Cote d’Ivoire, and Bangladesh). I returned to school to get a PhD because I wanted to study racial disparities in the communication that I had observed during health services. I am now working in Charleston, South Carolina, where my primary job is as Chief Nurse for Research at the Ralph H. Johns Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System. This work includes opportunity to help clinical nurses develop and implement quality improvement projects and participate in research. It also allows me to participate with the VA Health Equity & Rural Outreach Innovation Center, a multidisciplinary health service research group that gives support and collaboration for grant development, research, and publication. I am also adjunct associate faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine. I commute from a rural area north of Charleston where my husband is one of the few physicians and raised 3 daughters who learned early how to multi-task.