NIU Nursing Professor Nola Pender has been named to the advisory council for the new Center for Nursing Research of the National Institute of Health.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) is in charge of forming health policies in the federal government. Pender said she will be working with a group which sets policies for administering research money within the National Center for Nursing Research. The Center for Nursing Research is a branch of the NIH.

Seven people, including Pender, were named to the council by Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen. Pender will advise Bowen on the conduct and support of basic and clinical nursing research, training and other programs. NIH will hold several council meetings in Maryland during the year.

Pender has been at NIU since 1969. She teaches in the graduate program in Community Health Nursing, and directs the Health Promotion Research Program at NIU’s Social Science Research Institute.

She also is co-chairman of the national Health Promotion Research Conference which will be held in Racine, Wisc. from April 13 to 15. “The conference will host about 50 national experts trying to grapple with the conceptions of health research. We will identify research priorities,” she said.

Pender holds positions as president of the Midwest Nursing Research Society, secretary of the Family and Community Health Division of the Illinois Nurses’ Association and a consultant to the American Nurses’ Association on its national survey of research productivity among nurses with doctoral degrees.

As the author of both the first and second editions of Health Promotion In Nursing Practice, Pender holds an adjunct appointment at Rush University in Chicago, and was a distinguished visiting professor at Boston College and Vanderbilt University last year.