Centennial Professor of Health Policy

Columbia University, School of Nursing

Dr. Pat Stone is the Centennial Professor of Health Policy at Columbia University School of Nursing. Pat directs the School of Nursing’s Center for Health Policy. Pat earned her PhD at the University of Rochester and completed a post-doctoral program at Harvard University, School of Public Health. She is a nurse scientist, an adult nurse practitioner who has practiced in the nursing home setting, and a certified infection preventionist. She was also the current Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Infection Control. For over 25 years, Pat has maintained an externally funded program of research focused on improving health outcomes of vulnerable adults. She has led or collaborated on more than 45 externally funded studies and has been the principal investigator on many large, multi-site, national studies funded by the NIH. Pat has disseminated her scientific results in over 300 peer reviewed publications in high impact nursing and interdisciplinary policy, research, and clinical journals. The majority of her research has focused on the prevention of infections in vulnerable adults across healthcare settings and improving end-of-life care. For the past 15 years, Dr. Stone’s interdisciplinary team has conducted national studies examining nursing homes and home healthcare agencies capacity for infection prevention. The team uses national clinical assessment data and Medicare claims linked to novel surveys to understand the capacity of infection prevention and control, engaged stakeholders and conducted qualitative interviews. The results of these studies have informed state and federal health policy.