Carrie Henry

Carrie Henry, MSN, CNM, is the recipient of the 2020-2021 Miriam M. Powell Scholarship. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2001 from the Capstone College of Nursing at The University of Alabama, and her MSN in Nurse-Midwifery in 2005 from the Medical University of South Carolina. After over a decade in clinical practice, she spent five years teaching undergraduate nursing students at Emory University. Discovering how she enjoyed passing on her love for nursing, and intrigued at the potential to contribute to nursing knowledge through research, she began her PhD work at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing in 2017. She plans to graduate in 2021 and pursue a post-doctoral fellowship, followed by a tenure-track faculty position in a school of nursing.

By the time she was in third grade, Carrie was telling people she planned to become a nurse. As she learned more about Nursing, she was drawn to the combination of hard science and interpersonal relationships she found there. Her clinical practice included four years as a Labor and Delivery nurse, and six years as a nurse-midwife. During those years she treasured the relationships she developed with her patients and their families, and was honored to attend many of them during the births of their babies. She was also struck at the many questions she faced during her clinical practice which did not yet have evidence-based answers. She found herself frequently thinking, “Somebody should study this!”

After giving birth to triplets in 2011, Carrie took a step back from clinical practice, and worked for five years as an instructor in the undergraduate nursing programs at Emory University. She enjoyed the formal knowledge-sharing and informal mentoring opportunities she encountered in this role. This made it easy for her to decide to earn a PhD to pursue a career as faculty in a school of nursing.

Carrie’s dissertation study focuses on how Black mothers cope with stillbirth. This study will begin her program of research to develop evidence-based palliative care interventions for mothers following perinatal loss.

Carrie is involved with several professional organizations. She serves on the nominating committee for the Georgia Affiliate of the American College of Nurse-Midwives. She is a member of the American College of Nurse-Midwives; the Hospice and Palliative Nursing Association; the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses; the Southern Nursing Research Society; and Sigma Theta Tau International.