Brittney Daniels holds a special place in her heart for teen moms.
A certified lactation counselor, Daniels enjoys working with breastfeeding clients, especially teen moms, through the ETSU College of Nursing’s Nurse-Family Partnership Program (NFP), which provides free, in-home nursing care for first-time, low-income mothers. NFP staff educate participating mothers about pregnancy and follow the family until the child is 2 years old.
The reason for her passion to help these young women is deeply personal.
“I myself was a teen mom and became pregnant with my oldest daughter at 17,” said Daniels, who is pursuing both an MSN in nursing education and a Ph.D. in nursing at ETSU. “By the time I was 23, I had three children ages 5 and under, so I understand how vital support, encouragement, and education can be for these mothers.”
With three young children, Daniels found it difficult to balance school with work and home life, and so she worked in administrative and secretarial jobs to be able to spend more time with her children. She soon married, and the family moved from her home in Benton, Kentucky, to her husband’s hometown of Newport. With her husband’s encouragement, Daniels took some classes at Walters State Community College. Her younger sister, a nurse, thought Daniels would do great in nursing, and so that is the field she pursued, going to school full time to earn her bachelor’s degree in the RN-to-BSN program at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville while also working full time at the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville.
She soon realized she preferred the prevention and health promotion of community health over acute-care hospital nursing, and, after working for a while at a pediatric clinic, she joined the staff of the NFP, which would allow her to work near her home in Cocke County.
Daniels draws inspiration from her own experience as she counsels young mothers.
“I will never forget being told that because I was a teen mom, my children would be teen moms or drug addicts, because that’s what the statistics show. That was heartbreaking for me, because I did not want that for my kids,” she recalled. “But throughout my pregnancies and my time taking my children to doctors in Kentucky, I had some incredible nurses who were so nice and told me I could do anything I would like to do. They were very influential in letting me know that just because I had children early didn’t mean that I couldn’t be successful and that my children couldn’t be successful.
“And so it’s important to me to give back, because there is a lot of stigma around teen pregnancy. It’s hard if somebody is telling you constantly from the beginning that you are never going to amount to anything. Those moms really need our support to be able to grow up and be productive citizens. I want them to know they can do and be what they want to be.”
In keeping with her love of teaching and helping young mothers through the NFP, she applied to ETSU’s College of Nursing to further her education.
“I really love how friendly everybody is,” she said of the university, from her perspective as both a student and employee. “If I have a question, there’s not one person I couldn’t go to who is kind and full of information. It’s a very welcoming community. Even though it’s a bigger campus, it has a small-campus feel, because everybody is so friendly and willing to help you. All of my professors are very approachable and personable, and I feel that’s one of ETSU’s greatest qualities.”
Daniels hopes to eventually obtain a collegiate teaching position and also conduct research. For her dissertation, she is researching barriers to breastfeeding among teen mothers in rural Appalachia and the implications of these barriers for nursing practice.
“I’m very interested in pediatric maternal health – breastfeeding especially, and how that looks in a community setting,” she said. “There are a lot of opportunities to improve maternal health and pediatric outcomes, especially in rural areas where fewer resources are available.”
Daniels plans to go beyond the education she is currently receiving by continuing to learn even after earning her Ph.D. “Everyone talks about how nursing is a lifelong-learning profession. You have to stay up to date on stuff. You can’t let your highest level of learning be the end. For me, that means I’ll keep learning, keep adopting new ways to do things, and hopefully do research that will better someone’s life.”