Nicole A. Vaughn, MS, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science in the School of Nursing and Health Professions at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. Her research as a health psychologist over the past 20 years has focused on community-based participatory and community-engaged methods to reduce health disparities in African American and Hispanic/Latino/Latinx communities, primarily. She has led evidence-based and evidence-informed chronic disease prevention interventions in urban and rural settings including churches, community centers, after-school centers and grocery stores. She has been a principal investigator and co-investigator on multiple, federal, state, local and industry funded grants. Dr. Vaughn has presented at national conferences and published in scholarly journals focused on reducing disparities for minority communities. She has served on national review boards and as an ad hoc reviewer for the National Institutes of Health. She has been a peer reviewer for the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Journal of Community Psychology and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal, Preventing Chronic Disease.
Dr. Vaughn has BS in psychology from Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD and a MS and PhD in medical/health psychology from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences’ F. Hebert School of Medicine in Bethesda, MD. Dr. Vaughn was selected for the prestigious Ford Foundation Fellowship as a pre-doctoral scholar. Additionally, she completed a 1-year postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular behavioral medicine and led a family-based intervention on health in Washington, DC. She also completed a 2-year MT-DIRC fellowship in dissemination and implementation with Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Vaughn has taught high school, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students across her long career in higher education. She worked as part of a small team of faculty to develop the Public Health & Wellness undergraduate degree program at Rowan University and teaches upper-level courses in program planning and leadership, public health methods and interventions and US Healthcare Systems.
Over the years, Dr. Vaughn has received awards for her community engaged work in Philadelphia, PA and Southern New Jersey. Recently, she was part of a team that received the 2020 Best Collaborative Award from the Non-Profit Development Center of Southern New Jersey. She received the 2019 Unsung Hero in Public Health Award from the National Community Based Organization Network and was named as 1 of 4 finalists for the 2021 Remarkable Woman initiative for PHL 17 News. Dr. Vaughn’s current research involves engaging with multi-sectoral community partners on research focused to address food access and food insecurity for adults and families in New Jersey. She enjoys working with communities and researchers to design mutually beneficial quantitative and qualitative research projects that can provide data as well as direct impact to improve health and wellness for populations in the region.