JOHNSON CITY (December 10, 2012) – Dr. Judy McCook, a researcher and associate professor with the East Tennessee State University College of Nursing, has received a national award for her work in maternal child health.

McCook received the Effective Practice Award from the American Public Health Association (APHA), which lauded her accomplishments in the field. The APHA’s Maternal and Child Health Section recognized the contributions of McCook, who received the award at the organization’s recent annual conference.

A native of Atlanta, McCook is a clinical nurse specialist in maternal-infant nursing and is certified through the American Nurses Association as a high-risk perinatal nurse. Her research focuses on two areas: perinatal health promotion and risk reduction in Appalachia, and how hormones, behavior and environment interact and influence reproductive outcomes, specifically in women with polycystic ovary syndrome. She has more than 30 years of experience in academic and clinical practice.

In addition to her research pursuits at ETSU, McCook teaches undergraduate nursing students and provides interprofessional education to graduate students in the disciplines of medicine, pharmacy, public health and clinical psychology. McCook co-teaches a community-based participatory research course with Dr. Beth Bailey, an associate professor and psychologist in the Department of Family Medicine at ETSU’s James H. Quillen College of Medicine.

Bailey is principal investigator and McCook is a co-investigator for a research project, Tennessee Intervention for Pregnant Smokers (TIPS), which received multi-million dollar funding support from the State of Tennessee. Bailey and McCook lead student teams from allied health, medicine, nursing, clinical psychology and public health in an effort to reduce tobacco use by pregnant women in a region where levels of smoking during pregnancy are triple the national average.

McCook earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, where she studied under Dr. Nancy Reame, the director and principal investigator for one of the first two National Institutes of Health National Centers for Infertility Research.