Nancy M. H. Pontes

Dr. Nancy Pontes’ academic interests focus upon the improvement of population health trans-nationally. As a family nurse practitioner (FNP) and Distinguished Fellow and Practitioner of the National Academy of Practice (FNAP), Dr. Pontes has worked in a variety of roles and leadership positions.  Initially, she worked with inter-professional teams providing care to children with complex health needs.  She later set up a nurse-managed center in a New York alternative court, which served a variety of vulnerable populations including refugees, female and transgendered survivors of human trafficking. After completing her PhD at Columbia University, Dr. Pontes directed university health care services at Rowan University, which expanded into Assistant Vice President for Health and Wellness. In this role, her duties included oversight of centers for counseling and psychological services, addiction prevention, and health promotion.  More recently, she set up a school-based health center as part of a faculty practice of the Rutgers School of Nursing–Camden.  In 2015, she accepted a tenure-track faculty position at the School of Nursing–Camden, and assisted in the set up and first year practice of Project H.O.P.E.’s satellite health center in Cathedral Kitchen, which serves persons with food and housing insecurity.

In 2016, Dr. Pontes was the recipient of a three-year, $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education International Foreign Language Education (IFLE) office to increase international studies and Spanish language education for nursing students. This grant expanded existing programs and scholarships for learning abroad in Latin America, and initiated a population health course in Cuba.  Through this grant, Dr. Pontes has collaborated with Spanish language professors to infuse more Spanish language instruction into the learning abroad programs and to expand their Spanish language courses for health professionals. A result of this collaboration is an engaged civic learning Internal Certificate in Spanish for Health Care Professionals.

The overarching focus of Dr. Pontes’ research is to explore social determinants of health and well-being among vulnerable youth and families. Two primary research streams are 1) Secondary analysis of the nationally representative Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) to explore victimization, psychological distress and related variables among high school students, and 2) Qualitative phenomenological inquiry of mothers’ experiences with time famine, the chronic perceived shortage of time and its impact upon health and wellbeing.