University of Virginia School of Nursing
Mitchell - a community health nurse - studies novel cervical cancer screening methods in underserved rural communities in both domestic and international populations.

Assistant professor Emma Mitchell - who studies the HPV vaccine, novel cervical cancer screening methods, and co-directs of the School's Global Initiatives office - has been named to the Virginia Nurses Association's (VNA) "40 Under 40" awardees for 2018.

The VNA chose its annual awardees - who make up Virginia's outstanding young nurse leaders "because of their achievements in professional practice, leadership, and positive promotion and advancement of the nursing profession beyond the practice setting" - from a record number of nominees in 2018. Mitchell and her fellow awardees will be honored on stage at the Virginia Nurses Foundation Gala on Sept. 22 at the Richmond Hotel in Short Pump, Va.

Mitchell, a community health nurse, studies care access and cancer detection, health disparities, and novel modalities for HPV vaccination and detection. Her work currently focuses on the feasibility and acceptability of at-home, self-screening HPV tests as a route to upping detection of cervical cancer in underserved, rural areas, both domestically and internationally.

Mitchell earned her PhD and MSN from UVA and her BSN from UMass Dartmouth, and teaches courses on public health nursing, local and global health disparities, and social entrepreneurship and cancer prevention in Nicaragua, to both graduate and undergraduate students. Her study-abroad program in Bluefields, Nicaragua, recently received an $87,000 Jefferson Trust Award grant, the same program lauded by UVA Provost Tom Katsouleas with the "Excellence in Study Abroad" award.