Written by Jimmy Creed
Media contact: Alicia Rohan
A third-year Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing (Ph.D.) student from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing was selected for the National Cancer Institute Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program. Jacqueline Vo, BSN, R.N., is the first person from the UAB School of Nursing to receive the fellowship.
The fellowship is a four-year postdoctoral program for early scientists training in cancer prevention and control. She was chosen out of 112 applicants across a wide arrange of fields. She credits her success to UAB.
“I didn’t realize how many opportunities the UAB School of Nursing had provided me until something like this happened, and then I knew just how many resources it has,” Vo said. “I want all undergraduate nursing students to realize this too. I want them to realize there is a whole other route they can take in the field of research. Opportunities of a lifetime start here, and I want everyone to realize that, if I can do it, they can too.”
Vo is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Nursing Scholar and recipient of a two-year, American Cancer Society Doctoral Degree Scholarship in Cancer Nursing. She earned her BSN from the School of Nursing in 2014.
Since the inception of the fellowship in 1987, only a few nurses have been chosen. Vo, a former staff nurse in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit at UAB Hospital, says the selection committee was impressed that she has clinical experience as a bedside nurse to supplement extensive training as a nurse researcher.
“They loved that I had clinical experience, and that I had interacted with patients,” Vo said. “The interviewers saw that I bring a whole different perspective to research because I have had that patient interaction.”
She will begin the fellowship this August.