Melanie Lutenbacher is a nurse whose background includes a variety of clinical, research, academic and administrative roles in diverse rural and urban settings in the United States and Canada. As an interdisciplinary clinical researcher, pediatric and family nurse practitioner, consultant and advocate, her efforts have focused on promoting positive outcomes and improving service delivery to vulnerable populations, especially families at risk for abuse, those with children who have special health care needs, and those with high risk pregnancies. Over the years she has provided primary care to women and children in their homes and in clinics, served as an administrator of clinical entities and academic programs, served on a variety of non-profit boards, facilitated the formation of community coalitions, and conducted research using both qualitative and quantitative methods.
She has worked with many groups to develop community and home-based interventions, clinical, academic and community programs and research projects to address the needs of these and other populations within a context of family-centered systems of care. Including appropriate benchmark measures and outcomes are important elements of any project. Her work has been presented at the local, national and international level and published in a variety of professional journals including Nursing Research, Journal of Family Nursing, Journal of Pediatric Health Care, Journal of Adolescent Health, Public Health Nursing, Image: Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Journal of Community Health Nursing, and Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Melanie earned her B.S. in Nursing at the University of Texas at Austin, her M.S. at California State University at Long Beach and her Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky at Lexington. While at University of Kentucky she also earned a certificate in Behavioral Medicine. She holds a tenured faculty position in the School of Nursing at Vanderbilt University with a secondary appointment in the School of Medicine, Division of Pediatrics. In her ever-shrinking but incredibly important down time, she loves cooking, sailing and traveling with her family and friends, and running around with a camera.
Melanie's areas of expertise include: