SPECIAL SESSION: Team Leadership for Advancing Measurement, Family and Women's Health Research

Description/Overview: A team leadership model is important for having the most significant impact for scientific development of research methods as well as for developing an area of scientific inquiry. This session presents how Dr. Ora Lea Strickland utilized her nursing team leadership model throughout her scientific career to build collaborative teams with the ultimate outcomes of advancing measurement principles and practices for the nursing profession and for building the scientific base in the areas of family and women’s health research. Dr. Strickland discusses how her team leadership model was used as the operational backdrop for advancing nursing’s focus on securing the scientific basis of nursing measurement, developing nursing outcome measures for clinical practice and education, disseminating nursing measurement instruments and methods through the first nursing measurement journal, and for leading and conducting research on expectant fathers, sickle cell disease, various women’s health problems, and for helping to develop and lead the NIH landmark study – the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). Dr. Strickland presents her journey in nursing research utilizing team leadership principles for setting her research path, conducting and disseminating her own and other’s research in the interest of nursing scientific development. The WHI Study, which Dr. Strickland helped design and co-lead, will be used to apply key concepts from her nursing research team leadership model. The WHI research team consisted of more than 500 investigators. Model concepts include: strategic envisioning, systems thinking, advocacy, collaboration, communication, resource management, humanistic coaching, shared decision-making, subject-reseacher relationships, interprofessional relationships, and delegation. The WHI was one of the largest clinical trials and observational studies ever conducted which included a sample of 168,000 women from 40 research sites around the United States. As a member of the WHI Executive Steering Committee of this major research study, Dr. Strickland addresses politics, issues and team leadership approaches in the origination, design, implementation, and publication of findings. The WHI findings have changed the care of menopausal women, and has resulted in major changes and issues related to the prevention and care of women in regards to to estrogen and progestin hormone replacement therapy as well as for breast cancer, colon cancer and osteoporosis prevention. In addition to answering some important questions related to postmenopausal care of women, the study results raised questions about how its results have been applied. Have there been an over interpretation and application of the results? What limitations of the study have been ignored in the application of the results? What are the responsibilities of WHI team members in clarifying study implications? Dr. Strickland will discuss results with an eye to addressing these questions from the perspective of team science and the scientific and sociopolitical lessons learned.