Marilyn S. Sommers, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the Lillian S. Brunner Professor of Medical-Surgical Nursing, and Associate Director, Center for Health Disparities Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

Dr. Sommers has developed a program of research focused on human response to injury in general, with particular emphasis on risk-taking behaviors that lead to injury, as well as on the physical consequences of injury. She has systematically built the science of injury through a number of productive research programs that have led to sustained funding from federal agencies. Through a series of randomized controlled trials she has tested the effectiveness of screening and brief intervention to reduce health-compromising behaviors such as problem drinking and risky driving. The overall scientific significance of this work is the insight that injury risk comes from a cluster of risk-taking behaviors that need to be addressed by health care providers, and that these behaviors are amenable to interventions that promote health and safety. She has forged a new area of inquiry by developing innovative techniques for the forensic rape exam that will quantify injury by digital image analysis. This important work has the potential to reduce health disparities by providing sensitive and specific techniques to detect injury regardless of the skin color of rape survivors. Through systemic inquiry and extensive publications, Dr. Sommers has raised important questions about risk-taking, the consequences physical injury, and strategies to reduce injury. Her work has enhanced injury science and led to promoting health.

Dr. Sommers is a superb disseminator of findings, with more than 80 published articles, abstracts, reviews, and reports; 10 books or editorships; and 12 chapters in books. She has an extraordinary publication record in clinical as well as research journals. She has consulted nationally and internationally and has been on numerous review panels and study sections for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and Ireland’s Health Research Board. In addition, Dr. Sommers serves as Chair of the Steering Committee for the Council for the Advancement of Nursing Sciences (CANS) and serves as Chair of the Research Committee of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the first nurse scientist to do so.