Alumna finds passion in informatics
Alumna and Clinical Assistant Professor Stephanie Reed, DNP (BSN 2008, MSN 2015, DNP 2022), is Chief Clinical Information Officer at Children's of Alabama, serving as an intermediary figure among professions in patient care and overseeing all facets of informatics, including nursing, lab, pharmacy and radiology, as well as clinical information technology.
"I am the middle ground between nurses taking care of patients and the IT professionals who are working on computers daily," Reed, who also is a member of the School's Junior Board of Visitors, said. "I use my clinical expertise and IT knowledge to merge the gap between the two, and it's helpful to both sides to have multiple perspectives at the table. At the end of the day, it's about marrying the clinical workflow with health IT and identifying how health IT can complement or improve patient care."
After earning her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree, she worked at Children's as a bedside pediatric intensive care unit nurse. While in that role, she was asked to help with a short-term IT project as a nurse informatician, with a plan of returning to the bedside within a year. What turned out to be an ever-evolving project led to Reed discovering her passion for informatics.
Since then, Reed's career has progressed to nurse informaticist, manager of nursing informatics, to most recently taking on the entirety of clinical informatics at Children's of Alabama. She also returned to the UAB School of Nursing to earn a Master of Science in Nursing degree with a specialty in Nursing Informatics and a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree.
Alumna addresses diaper need through nonprofit
Alumna Lindsay Gray, RN (BSN 2006), is using her passion for women and children to improve access to essential needs of Alabama families as Executive Director of Bundles of Hope Diaper Bank. Founded in 2015, the diaper bank serves more than 1,000 families per week through the distribution of diapers, wipes and feminine products.
"The role Bundles of Hope plays is significant and substantial in the lives of families here in Alabama, which is the sixth most impoverished in the country," Gray said. "Families in Alabama struggle with this more than most comparatively, with some having to make the choice between food or diapers, and it affects other areas of a family's health as far as nutrition goes."
The organization distributes 225,000 diapers per month, 50,000 of which are from direct service through the nonprofit's warehouse, The Changing Station, located in Birmingham. The remaining 175,000 diapers are distributed through partnerships with local organizations including church food pantries, shelters and health care providers. In 2017, the diaper bank began distributing feminine products, opening an opportunity to engage with and meet the needs of women and mixed-generation families.
Partnerships are crucial to extending Bundles of Hope's impact beyond the Birmingham area. After being named a sub-grantee for a Health and Human Services diaper pilot program from the Community Action Agency of Alabama in 2023, the diaper bank established a partnership with the UAB School of Nursing's Nurse-Family Partnership of Central Alabama. What began as a referral relationship in 2022, with nurse home visitors informing clients about the resource in the community, has evolved to nurses delivering diapers and supplies to NFP mothers during home visits. NFP currently picks up on average 17,000 diapers a month, delivering roughly a two-week supply of 100 diapers to clients.