Distinguished Contribution to Family Nursing Award 2011

Abstract

Tribute to Dr. Perri J. Bomar offered by Janice M. Bell, RN, PhD Dr. Perri Bomar began her nursing career as a maternity nurse and worked with childbearing families. During her graduate studies in the early 1970s, she was encouraged to focus her research on health promotion with African American women, and as a nontenured professor in the 1980s, she became interested in health disparities in this population when chronic illness such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes arose. She was part of a task force of faculty who created a new family nursing program in the late 1970s at University of Akron and was instrumental in strengthening the family nursing program at University of San Diego, where she taught family nursing and mentored many graduate and doctoral students in family nursing research and health promotion independent projects. This work led to an invitation, with encouragement from a colleague, to write a nursing textbook that married the ideas of family nursing with health promotion. Perri reports that she initially felt like an imposter. Who was she to write such a book? Could she blend these two areas of research and knowledge? Would there be a market for such a book? Her first edition was published in 1989, and there was enthusiastic acceptance of her ideas and those of her contributors who persuasively argued that families-including their rituals and routines-are at the center of health promotion. This work was recognized with the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in 1989, and Nursing Outlook also recognized her textbook with a Book of the

Highlights From the 10th International Family Nursing Conference, Kyoto, Japan, June 24-28, 2011

“…At IFNC10, four more outstanding nurses from Japan (Bell, 2011b) were honored by the Journal of Family Nursing including: Dr. Kazuko Suzuki, Dr. Sayumi Nojima, Dr. Kazuko Ishigaki, and Dr. Nami Kobayashi. Dr. Lawrence (Larry) Ganong was also recognized as "kin" of our family nursing community for his distinguished interdisciplinary family scholarship and contributions to family nursing science (Bell, 2011a).…”