Join us for our annual in-person celebration with a light lunch as faculty, alums, and students share work advancing global healthy equity.
This yyear’sprogram explores rural healthcare disparities and community-centered approaches from Washington and abroad. There will also be a United Nations Update, doctoral lightning talks, and poster presentations from Global Health Nursing Certificate students and study abroad scholarship recipients.
Date: March 13, 2026
Time: 11 am – 1 pm
Location: Health Sciences Education Building Room 101
Register Here!
Meet our Presenters
Sarah Shannon, PhD, RN, FAAN
Dr. Shannon is a nationally recognized nursing leader, clinical ethicist, and scholar whose career spans more than three decades across major academic and healthcare institutions in the western United States. Since 2017, she has served as dean of the Montana State University Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing, bringing to the role her deep expertise in ethics, communication, and interprofessional collaboration. Before joining MSU, she held senior academic leadership at Oregon Health & Science University and spent more than 20 years on the faculty of the University of Washington School of Nursing, where she also held an adjunct appointment in the School of Medicine’sDepartment of Bioethics and Humanities. Her clinical background includes work as a critical care and medical–surgical nurse in Seattle and Juneau, as well as extensive service as a clinical ethics consultant for multiple healthcare organizations.
Sarah Shannon’s research focuses on improving communication around ethically challenging issues in healthcare, including end‑of‑life decision‑making in intensive care, error disclosure, and interprofessional conflict. She has been an investigator on numerous NIH and AHRQ‑funded studies and has taught clinical and professional ethics for more than two decades. A frequent speaker and long‑time member of institutional ethics committees, she is widely regarded for her contributions to advancing ethical practice and communication in complex clinical environments.
Daniel Suárez- Baquero
Dr. Suárez- Baquero is originally from Colombia, where he earned my MSN and BSN from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, focusing on Maternal and Perinatal Nursing Care. His expertise includes roles as a labor and birth nurse, nurse midwife, and nurse administrator. He obtained his Ph.D. in Nursing from The University of Texas at Austin, where he studied Colombian Partería Tradicional (lay midwifery).
He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the ACTIONS program at the University of California, San Francisco, with a focus on reproductive justice as the primary approach to reproductive health services provision. Since his undergraduate studies, he has developed a deep passion for qualitative research methods, particularly in maternity and perinatal health, reproductive justice, Latine reproductive health experiences, and the community/cultural memory of ethnic-minoritized women. He utilizes advanced qualitative methods to elevate the voices of minoritized communities that have been overlooked, aiming to promote health, birth equity, and reproductive justice globally.
Marin Strong, PhDc
Marin is a community health nurse, a PhD candidate in the School of Nursing, and an MPH Epidemiology student at UW. She has worked clinically in Alaska, Texas, and Washington in indigenous health, the COVID-19 response, and primary health care at a federally qualified health center. Marin’s dissertation research seeks to understand better how the dynamics between pregnant women and their male partners impact women’s HIV and STI prevalence, and men’s engagement with partner treatment in Western Kenya. Marin’s other research includes a feminist analysis of community perspectives of pregnant women’s PrEP use and an implementation study of mobile van and street-based delivery of medication for opioid use disorder in King County, Washington. Recently, Marin has joined Sigma’s United Nations team as a Youth Representative.
Jay Ward, RN
Jay is currently a second-year Doctor of Nursing Practice student in the Family Nurse Practitioner track at the University of Washington, where he has completed graduate certificates in Global Health Nursing and Palliative Care. He earned his Master of Science in Nursing from Columbia University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Virginia. He currently practices as a Registered Nurse in the Pediatric ICU at Seattle Children’s Prior to transitioning to nursing, Jay spent fourteen years at PATH, a global health nonprofit organization, in Seattle, Geneva, and Washington, D.C., focusing on projects in vaccine development and access, maternal and child health, and health systems strengthening.
I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with a great team of students, research scientists, and faculty from Nursing, Bioengineering, Human-Centered Design and Engineering, and more recently from Materials Science and Engineering. We are working to develop tools to support individuals with active tuberculosis successfully complete their treatment and equipping teams with interactive mobile tools to monitor and provide support to their patients. We have developed and continue to refine user-centered mobile applications for patients and health teams that is accompanied by a reengineered direct drug metabolite test.
