FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Rutgers Assistant Professor of Nursing Science and Asthma consultant at

JRMC named Chair of Community Pediatric Nursing

Dr. Felesia Bowen, an Assistant Professor at the Rutgers Newark School of Nursing and an

expert on asthma-related cases for the Jewish Renaissance Medical Center, has been named the

François-Xavier Bagnoud Endowed Chair in Community Pediatric Nursing. The FXB

Endowment was created to support the delivery of comprehensive community-based health care

services to vulnerable children and children with special health care needs. The Chair must be

someone who personifies these values, and must be able to coordinate activities between the

FXB Center, the Rutgers SON and the rest of the university. The appointment is for a 3-year

term which will be up renewal by 2018.

The FXB Center was originally created in 1983 to combat the then-newly discovered HIV

epidemic and was based in the United Children’s Hospital in Newark. By 2013, it had relocated

to the Rutgers School of Nursing. Though its original mission still remains, the Center’s duties

have expanded to include providing clinical training programs and other assistance, as well as

child welfare nursing.

Dr. Felesia Bowen has over 20 years of experience in her field and served as in the U.S. Army

Nurse Corps during the First Gulf War. She has received a BSN from Tuskegee University, a

MSN from Rutger’s University, and a PhD from Columbia University. She has also served on

several other boards in a leadership role, including the NJ Chapter of the National Association of

Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, the NJ Chapter of the American Lung Association Leadership

Board and the Center for Urban Youth and Families at Rutgers University School of Nursing,

and received the NJ Healthcare Foundation of NJ Lester Z. Lierberman Humanism in Healthcare

Award in 2014 as well as the Hurdis Griffith Faculty Research Award in 2012.

Dr. Bowen is a certified pediatric nurse practitioner, with a focus on oral health and researching

and treating asthma – a disease she has first-hand experience dealing with in the case of her own

daughter, who has “severe persistent asthma.” Dr. Bowen has dedicated much of her career to

combating the disease, as well as healthcare disparities – which are often a leading factor in

disproportionately greater numbers of asthma-related cases appearing in poorer minority

communities.

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