JoEllen Wilbur, PhD, APN, FAAN has a long research career in the area of women’s health with a focus on midlife women’s symptoms, cardiovascular health, and physical activity behavior. As a nursing scientist, she is recognized for advancing the science and practice regarding women’s physical activity. Early in her career, she was able to build on physical activity measures originally developed for men and extend capability for reliable and valid measures of women’s activity. She expanded that work in pursuit of exercise physical activity as a natural alternative to hormone replacement therapy to manage menopausal symptoms. She has a line of research, spanning over three decades, in developing evidence based, culturally sensitive, community based physical interventions to increase physical activity in African American women. This includes consideration of the influence of environmental factors, including the ‘built’ environment, on women’s adoption and maintenance of physical activity. She expanded her research to examine the influence of physical activity on cognition in older Latinx. Her work has been funded from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Wood Johnson Active Living Research and National Institutes of Health.
Wilbur joined the College of Nursing at Rush University as professor and Endowed Independence Chair in Nursing in September 2007. She served as associate dean for research from June 2008 to 2020. She served as a member of the National Advisory Council for Nursing Research at NIH from 2017-2021.
