The University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS) is happy to announce that Hudson P. Santos Jr., PhD, RN, has been hired as a full professor to fill the Dolores J. Chambreau, RN Endowed Chair in Nursing. His start date is May 1, 2022.
Dr. Santos joins SONHS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), where he was the Beerstecher-Blackwell Distinguished Term Scholar and an associate professor at the School of Nursing. He was also director of UNC’s Biobehavioral Laboratory, and founder and director of the Health Resilience and Omics Science (HEROS) Hub for identifying protective and risk factors and genetic/genomic mechanisms affecting child neurodevelopmental trajectories.
His research evaluates how early life stressors interact with the genome and affect perinatal health and child developmental outcomes in high-risk populations, as well as across socioeconomic status levels, and racially and ethnically diverse communities.
“My research focuses on the developmental origins of health and disease for at-risk children, concentrating on the psychosocial and biological dimension of early life adversity and its effects on perinatal and child health outcomes,” says Dr. Santos, who is a Fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. His long-term aim is to prevent neurodevelopmental impairment and maintain the well-being of children and families through intervention and precision health approaches.
“With expertise in -omics technologies, early life adversity, child neurodevelopment, and perinatal mental health, Dr. Santos is a brilliant addition to our world-class faculty,” says Dean Cindy L. Munro. “He is an exemplar of the Chambreau family’s dream of supporting academic excellence at their beloved University of Miami. Through this endowed chair, Dr. Santos will continue to build on our foundation of top-tier nursing education and mission-driven research.”
Dolores and William J. Chambreau were generous UM benefactors and supporters of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center through planned giving. One of the first women tapped into UM’s Iron Arrow Honor Society, Dolores Jean Chambreau (1925-2006) was a career nurse and gifted hospital administrator who went on to become associate chief of nursing service education at the Miami Veterans Affairs Hospital. She was deeply involved in her alma mater, serving as president of the SONHS Alumni Association from 1972-73 and of the UM Alumni Association from 1978-79. She was a UM trustee from 1985-87 and member of the advisory committee convened to establish the graduate nursing program at SONHS.
“I am honored to carry forward the vision of excellence for nursing leadership the Chambreaus set forth through this endowed chair in my new academic home at the University of Miami,” says Dr. Santos. “During this pandemic, we have all witnessed the importance of nurses to keep our society healthy and well. I am confident that bringing my program of research to the international, interdisciplinary environment fostered at SONHS will promote great synergy toward advancing health equity and improving health outcomes.”
Dr. Santos is principal investigator on research grants totaling over $5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH): “Healthy Mothers-Healthy Children: An Intervention with Hispanic Mothers and Their Young Children,” “Genetic and Epigenetic Effects on Childhood Cognitive Trajectories,” and “Placental Origins of Positive Child Health Outcomes.” In the latter study, he and his team explored multi-omic (DNA methylation, mRNA, and microRNA levels) mechanisms that indicate in utero programming of positive health outcomes among children born extremely premature.
A skilled educator, Dr. Santos was the mentorship and training director for the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Institute for Environmental Health Solutions, where he led the innovative Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. His mission is to “stimulate students to pursue science and use scientific knowledge to inform clinical practice and health solutions,” he explains. “I promote and strive for inclusivity in my classroom so that students from different backgrounds can feel comfortable venturing into the learning process.”
Growing up in Brazil, Dr. Santos discovered his passion for nursing early, through his mother, an LPN, and his uncle, a hospital director. He completed his LPN at Bahia State College of Health and his BSN at the State University of Paraiba in Campina Grande in Brazil. He maintains his RN license in Brazil and the U.S. and is an adjunct associate professor at the Federal University of Bahia School of Nursing. After working clinically for a time, Dr. Santos earned his PhD in nursing, summa cum laude, from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was a Visiting Scholar at UNC-CH and the University of British Columbia before completing his postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University School of Nursing.
From 2018-2021, Dr. Santos served as an academic editor for the international peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS One. He is an elected member of the International Society of Nurses in Genetics Board of Directors, an elected council member for the U.S. Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, and a member of the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) epigenetics working group.
