Carmen J. Portillo, RN, PhD, FAAN has been named the Yale School of Nursing’s next Executive Deputy Dean. Her term will begin July 1, 2017. Dr. Portillo currently serves as Professor and Chairperson of the Community Health Systems department at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Nursing. Her long tenure at UCSF has been marked by progressive faculty growth and administrative stewardship encompassing exemplary School and University committee leadership, leadership of the International Center for HIV/AIDS Research & Clinical Training in Nursing, and coordination of multiple academic programs, including almost 25 years managing UCSF’s HIV/AIDS minor and serving as the Principal Investigator of multiyear HRSA-funded training of advanced practice nurses for HIV clinical management.
Her research interests center on HIV and also cover sleep disturbance, fatigue and its genetic associations in people with HIV/AIDS. Her work includes adherence and stigma related to HIV/AIDS, Hispanic health issues, women’s health, symptom management, quality of life, health systems, health disparities in vulnerable and high-risk populations, and international capacity development. She has served in reviewer, advisory, and editorial roles for many prominent journals in addition to being highly published in her own right.
Dr. Portillo has provided instrumental leadership in expanding opportunities for Hispanic nurses in four-year degree and graduate programs across the country. She’s often called upon by schools of nursing to develop recruitment and retention strategies for minority nurses. She helped found the National Association of Ethnic Minority Nurse Associations, Inc., which represents the five ethnic minority nurse organizations.
She is widely known in the nursing sciences having been nationally and internationally recognized with numerous honors and awards, including the Dr. Martin Luther King Award from UCSF, she was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist, and more recently was honored by Sigma Theta Tau for recognition of excellence in nursing leadership.
Dr. Portillo will be taking the reins from current Executive Deputy Dean Dr. Holly Kennedy who will be stepping down this summer to return to her program of research shaping the global agenda for midwifery and midwifery research.