IOA Staff
Mary H. Palmer, PhD, RNC, FAAN
Interim Co-Director
Mary H. Palmer, PhD, RNC, FAAN, Professor and the Helen W. and Thomas L. Umphlet Distinguished Professor in Aging, joined The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Nursing faculty in 2002. Dr. Palmer is an interim co-director of the University of North Carolina Institute on Aging. She is also a co-director of the RAND/Hartford funded Interdisciplinary Center for Aging Research: Uniting Scientists at UNC and the project director of a Health Resources and Services Administration Comprehensive Geriatric Education Program grant (D62 HP01913) entitled, “Improving the Care of Acutely Ill Elders”. She also serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and on the Editorial Boards of Geriatric Nursing and Clinical Geriatrics. Dr. Palmer is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and the Gerontological Society of America.
Dr. Palmer has conducted research, published, and lectured extensively on urinary incontinence in adults. Her research has led to a better understanding of the correlates of and risk factors for urinary incontinence in adults. She recently completed a small randomized control trial investigating the effect of a behavioral intervention study on incontinent heart failure patients.
Dr. Palmer is the author of award winning books on urinary continence. Dr. Palmer is a member of the 4th International Consultation on Incontinence and a founding member of the International Consultation on Incontinence Research Society. She has been a Visiting Scholar to Flinders University School of Nursing and Midwifery in Australia. She is a past Chair of the Clinical Medicine Section (now Health Sciences Section) of the Gerontological Society of America and currently is the chair of its Fellows Committee. She is the nurse representative to the International Continence Society’s Ethics Committee and she serves on the Public Education Committee of the American Geriatrics Society.
Dr. Palmer received her BSN and Master of Science degrees from the University of Maryland at Baltimore and her PhD in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health (now Bloomberg School of Public Health) and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She was a senior staff fellow in the Behavioral Sciences Laboratory of the Gerontology Research Center, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health from 1994-1996. Recent honors include selection as a fellow for the 2008-2009 UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities Academic Leadership Program. She received the American Geriatrics Society and the National Association for Continence “Continence Care Champion Award” in May 2009.
Email: mhpalmer@email.unc.edu
