Colleen Conway-Welch, PhD, CNM, FAAN

Dean
Vanderbilt School of Nursing
461 21st Avenue South
111 Godchaux Hal
Nashville, TN
USA 37240

Biographical Sketch: Colleen Conway-Welch has served as Professor and Dean of Vanderbilt University School of Nursing since 1984.  Holder of  honorary doctorates from Cumberland University, Georgetown University, and the University of Colorado, she is a graduate of Georgetown University, Catholic University of America, and New York University.  She has published extensively, served on President Reagan’s Commission on the HIV Epidemic in 1988, the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare in 1998, the Governor’s Tennessee Commission on the Future of TennCare, and appointed by Secretary Tommy Thompson to the Secretary’s Council on Public Health Preparedness, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness, DHHS.  She is a member of the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee with the Department of Health & Human Services and a member of the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute.  She was named by President Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2006 as a Member of the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the premier training program for military health care providers.  In 2007, she was appointed by Secretary Leavitt of DHHS to the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. She is a former president, and one of the founders, of Friends of the National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Nursing Research. 
                
She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, a charter Fellow of the American College of Nurse-Midwives, a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science and serves as a Director on the Boards of Pinnacle Bank, RehabCare Group, and Ardent Health Services in addition to numerous other 501(c)3 boards such as the HealthCare Leadership Council in Washington, D.C.  She is also the founding Director of the Nursing Emergency Preparedness Education Coalition.