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Nurse scientist Randy Jones (BSN ’00, MSN ’02, PhD ’05), an NIH-funded scholar, associate dean for partner development and engagement, and an award-winning educator and leader, was inducted into the National Black Nurses Association’s inaugural Academy of Diversity Leaders in Nursing (ADLN) for his “demonstrated expertise in nursing education, research, practice, policy, [and] administration as it relates to issues of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.”

The new fellowship is the latest honor for Jones, who recently was also recently celebrated with the 2024 Armstead Robinson Award, is a Robert Wood Johnson Nurse Faculty Scholar alumnus, and a member of the National Cancer Policy Forum.

One of the NBNA’s 53 first-ever Distinguished ADLN Fellows, Jones — who earned three nursing degrees from UVA — is a familiar face in nursing research, clinical spaces, and as “boots on the ground” in the community. He earned a $2.2 million NIH grant to develop a decision tool to guide men with advanced prostate cancer through treatment and avoid decisional regret. He’s also earned funding from the American Cancer Society, the American Nurses Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and speaks to audiences around the country about the importance of treatment decision making tools and of encouraging family members to be part of the process, especially for communities of color.

Jones is among the faculty leaders who organizes and staffs, with UVA Health, UVA School of Medicine, and colleagues from other social services organizations, biweekly pop-up clinics in the Southwood and Fifeville neighborhoods of Charlottesville. Since December 2023, Jones and his peers have taken part in 14 such clinics and served nearly 30 people at each, including 115 unduplicated individuals, many of whom are often reluctant to seek healthcare within a traditional clinic setting.

Elected to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s 37-member National Cancer Policy Forum in 2020 and chosen as an advisor for the American Academy of Nursing’s Institute for Nursing Leadership in 2019, Jones was invited to be the 2020 National Institute of Nursing Research director’s lecturer, named the Southern Nursing Research Society’s Researcher of the Year in Minority Health, the National Black Nurses Association’s Institute of Excellence Scholar, and has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing since 2012.

The NBNA ceremony took place in late July following the group’s 52nd annual Institute and Conference in San Francisco, Ca. The National Black Nurses Association represents more than 350,000 Black RNs, licensed vocational and practical nurses, nursing students, and retired nurses from across the U.S., Eastern Caribbean, and Africa, through 111 chapters in 34 states and Washington, D.C.