image: Diane Santa Maria, DrPH, MSN, RN, dean of Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston, has just received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Credit: UTHealth Houston
More than a decade of work with youth experiencing homelessness and HIV prevention has led to a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for Diane Santa Maria, DrPH, MSN, RN, dean of Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston.
Santa Maria is The Jane and Robert Cizik Distinguished Chair, Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair in Nursing Education Leadership, and a professor at the nursing school. She was among 400 scientists and engineers recognized in a White House announcement on Jan. 14.
Established in 1996, the PECASE is the highest honor the U.S. government bestows on early-career scientists and engineers, recognizing exceptional potential for leadership. Professor Tricia A. Zucker, PhD, the Albert and Margaret Alkek Distinguished Chair in Early Childhood Development and Harriet and Joe Foster Distinguished Professor at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, as well as co-director of the Children’s Learning Institute at UTHealth Houston, received the award in 2019.
Santa Maria’s innovative program of research has grown steadily over the past 12 years, from pilot projects exploring youth homelessness, adolescent sexual health, and substance use to multimillion-dollar R01 awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is currently the principal investigator on a $2.8 million grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) testing a mobile health intervention aimed at HIV prevention among youth experiencing homelessness. Last year, she completed a five-year, $3 million NINR study testing a nurse case management HIV prevention intervention with this population.
Overall NIH funding to Cizik School of Nursing has quadrupled to more than $6.4 million under Santa Maria’s leadership, making Cizik School of Nursing the top nursing school for NIH funding in Texas and among the top 20 in the nation.
“This award recognizes innovative and far-reaching developments in science and speaks to Dean Santa Maria’s exceptional work as a nurse scientist, as well as the strength of the research program at Cizik School of Nursing and its impact in communities,” said Giuseppe N. Colasurdo, MD, UTHealth Houston president and Alkek-Williams Distinguished Chair.
Santa Maria has helped establish HIV-related research as a growing focus at Cizik School of Nursing. She is a member of the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council, and she is the director of the Developmental Core and co-director of the Substance Use Scientific Working Group at the Texas Developmental Center for AIDS Research.
“I am deeply honored to receive this prestigious award, and I am extremely proud of the work being done by our faculty and interprofessional colleagues to not only address HIV prevention and care in Houston, but to explore and develop interventions that can help end the epidemic nationally and globally,” Santa Maria said.
She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM), and she was a 2022 inductee into the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society’s International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame. She is a board member of the Friends of the NINR and the SAHM.
Santa Maria was named dean of Cizik School of Nursing in 2020 after leading the school ad interim for two years. She joined the school in 2009 as a clinical faculty member teaching community health nursing and was promoted to assistant professor after earning a Doctor of Public Health from the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. She was promoted to associate professor in 2018 and tenured professor in 2022. She also served as a visiting professor in the Centers for AIDS Prevention Studies at The University of California School of Medicine from 2016 to 2018.
Santa Maria holds a Master of Science in Nursing from Case Western Reserve University School of Nursing in Cleveland, Ohio, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from The Ohio State University School of Nursing.