Rate My Professor Lisa Heelan-Fancher

Lisa Heelan-Fancher is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Boston, holding certifications as PhD, FNP-BC, ANP-BC, and CNE. She earned her PhD from Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey; a Post-Master's Certificate in Nursing Education from the College of Mount St. Vincent in Riverdale, New York; a Post-Master's Certificate as a Family Nurse Practitioner and an MSN as an Adult Nurse Practitioner from Columbia University in New York, New York; and a BSN in Nursing from William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. As a board-certified family and adult nurse practitioner, her program of research centers on improving childbirth outcomes by decreasing unnecessary cesarean deliveries, advancing birth equity, and investigating the effects of climate change and environmental stressors on maternal and infant health. Her research interests encompass maternal and infant health, health equity, social determinants of health, and mixed-methods research approaches. She examines large datasets to identify factors disrupting physiologic birth, collects primary data on barriers to research utilization among labor and delivery nurses, studies support needs for women in early labor, professional labor support, preterm birth factors among Black women, and health inequities in childbirth.

Dr. Heelan-Fancher has been recognized with the American Nurses Association 2020 Excellence in Nursing Research award and the 2018 Pearl Rosendahl Teaching Excellence award. Additional honors include the Anne Kibrick 2016 Research award and the Robert Wood Johnson Nurse Scholar award from 2011 to 2015. She has received funding from the Healey grant, Faculty Fund for Enhancing Interdisciplinary Research, Sigma Theta Tau, and the Martha E. Rogers’ Scholars Fund. Her key publications include Heelan-Fancher, L., & Nsiah-Jefferson, L. (2024). Advancing climate justice to achieve birth equity, in Climate justice and public health; Heelan-Fancher, L. et al. (2024). Nulliparous women’s expectations and experiences of early labor, Maternal Child Nursing; Zhang, Y. et al. (2023). Health disparities in the use of primary cesarean delivery among Asian American women, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health; Nguyen, H., & Heelan-Fancher, L. (2022). Female relatives as lay doulas and birth outcomes, Journal of Perinatal Education; Heelan-Fancher, L. et al. (2019). Impact of continuous electronic fetal monitoring on birth outcomes in low-risk pregnancies, Birth; and Heelan-Fancher, L. (2016). Patient advocacy in childbirth, Nursing Science Quarterly. She contributes to nursing organizations and public health initiatives focused on maternal and infant wellbeing.