Terry Badger of the University of Arizona College of Nursing will be honored for her work and inducted into the Sigma Foundation for Nursing’s 2019 International Researcher Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony takes place July 27 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Twenty-four nurse researchers were selected for this year’s induction. According to the Sigma website, honorees will be presented with a crystal award and will participate in a panel discussion.
Badger has worked at UA for 30 years. She is the Division of Community and Systems Health Science chair for the College of Nursing, the Eleanor Bauwens endowed chair, a professor in the College of Nursing and a professor in the Psychiatry Department.
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Badger said she was thrilled when she heard she was chosen for the Hall of Fame and knows some of the other nurses being inducted alongside her.
“Oh, I was just ecstatic,” Badger said. “I was so happy.”
The selection is conducted through a nomination process. Badger said some of her colleges put together the information to nominate her in the fall, and she found out she was selected in early March.
“My colleagues from here at the University of Arizona as well as around the country got together and put in a nomination packet for me,” Badger said. “Basically, it is competitive in the fact that you submit your nomination packet and then a board evaluates your body of work and then makes a decision about whether you will be inducted or not.”
This is the 10th year the Sigma Foundation has held this Hall of Fame induction. Badger and the other 2019 inductees will join the 176 Hall of Fame nurse researchers who were previously inducted.
“These Hall of Fame researchers have made highly substantive contributions to global health that will resonate for decades,” Sigma President Beth Baldwin Tigges said in a statement on Sigma’s website. “I offer my sincere congratulations to these 23 outstanding nurses.”
Jason Gelt, communications and content specialist for the College of Nursing, has known Badger for the two years he has been working at the college.
“I’ve written about her research on several occasions, and she’s a big award winner here at the college, constantly getting grants and getting funded,” Gelt said.
Gelt said he was excited when he heard of Badger’s induction and thinks it highlights her excellent track record of research.
“You know, everything that she does is geared around helping people,” Gelt said. “She is one of our most stellar faculty members and it’s bringing a lot of good attention to her work and also to the college.”
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At the ceremony, Badger will give a 30 minute presentation on some of her research work. She has been conducting research on psychological distress associated with cancer patients and working to improve quality of life for cancer survivors and their caregivers during and after treatment.
“Many, many years ago, I realized that when people have chronic conditions, they also have depression and anxiety and stress, and it just made a lot of sense that we would treat both the physical and emotional symptoms related to having a chronic condition,” Badger said. “In this case, I work with cancer survivors and their caregivers.”
Badger said although she is incredibly thankful for being selected for the Hall of Fame, it won’t affect her future research plans. She said her program of research is pretty well set and her plans are to continue working at UA conducting research and teaching students.
“I’m extremely honored to join so many other distinguished researchers and it is truly a privilege and an honor to be selected to be in this Hall of Fame,” Badger said.
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