Joyce Newman Giger

Joyce Newman Giger, a pioneer in transcultural nursing, is currently a Professor at Florida International University College of Nursing. Formerly, she served as President, American University of Health Sciences; Professor and Lulu Wolf Endowed Chair, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); Professor of Graduate Studies, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Dean, School of Nursing, Columbus State University; and Founding Dean, Bethel College. Of note, she was the first African-American nurse to be appointed as a tenured professor in the history of UCLA’s School of Nursing, Dr. Newman Giger, a prolific writer, has authored 190 articles, 14 book chapters, and 8 books on strategies to incorporate culturally-appropriate care and has developed a model for assessing phenomena relevant to delivering that care. 

Dr. Newman Giger’s best-selling textbook, Transcultural Nursing; Assessment and Intervention, has been widely adopted by 357 schools of nursing in the United States and abroad and translated into seven languages. The Office of Minority Health (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) used her model as one of the overarching models for rendering culturally competent care. The Emergency Nurses Association adopted her model to guide the development of their position statement on diversity in emergency care and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing used it as a theoretical framework to develop undergraduate and graduate toolkits. 

Dr. Newman Giger has a long history of involvement in groundbreaking research in transcultural nursing and genetics. Her leadership and research in genetics has transformed nursing standards and care. Dr. Newman Giger's research focuses on genetic indices and other physiological predictors of coronary heart disease among pre-menopausal African-American women (18-45) as they relate to designing culturally competent interventions to stop the phenotypical expression of risk indices for the development of coronary heart disease among this vulnerable population. Earning her post-doctorate in genetics, she was one of the first nurses to receive the largest single year grant from the Department of Defense to study genetic predictors of coronary heart disease risk in pre-menopausal Black women. 

Dr. Newman Giger has served as Editor of the Journal of the National Black Nurses Association (NBNA) since 1999. In this role, she mentored over 10,000 nurses in writing for scholarly publications and developing grants. She has served as Associate Editor, Journal of Nursing Science, Manuscript Reviewer, Journal of Advanced Nursing, and Editorial Review Board Member, Health Care Management. In 2020, Dr. Newman Giger led a team of NBNA nurses to develop an award-winning article on the effects of COVID-19 in African-Americans and co-wrote a proposal to receive a much-needed grant to address vaccine hesitancy in pregnant Black women. 

Dr. Newman Giger earned her EdD from Ball State University, an MS from Indiana University, a BSN from Goshen College, and an ADN from Kentucky State University. She also completed service in the United States Army Nurse Corps, where she rose to the rank of Major. As a military nurse, Dr. Newman Giger educated soldiers to provide culturally competent nursing care for their patients. In 1994, she was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing (Academy) and is a former chair of the Academy’s Expert Panel on Cultural Competence. The Academy designated her model, the Giger and Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model: A Roadmap for Addressing Cultural Factors in Health Care as an Edge Runner in 2007.