Leadership & Members

Cathy Maxwell PhD, RN, FAAN

Cathy Maxwell

Dr. Maxwell's research is directed at understanding outcome trajectories of older adults related to functional decline and frailty. Dr. Maxwell has examined outcomes in relationship to older adults' frailty status and reported one-year outcomes of older adults hospitalized for an injury (falls), including functional decline, readmissions to acute care and mortality. Most recently, Dr. Maxwell developed an educational tool for older adults to facility their understanding of the concept of frailty and to encourage proactive management of their personal trajectories of aging. She is interested in interventions with a nursing focus that empower older adults to engage in behaviors that enhance well-being and improve quality of life.

Kanah Lewallen DNP, AGPCNP-BC, GNP-BC

Kanah Lewallen

Dr. Lewallen completed her BSN in 2006 and worked with older adults in the acute care setting while starting her MSN program at VUSN. She completed her MSN in 2009 with a dual focus on adult and gerontological advanced practice nursing. Dr. Lewallen is dual certified as a Gerontological Nurse Practitioner and an Adult Gerontological Primary Care Nurse Practitioner. She completed her DNP in 2015 at Belmont University. Her DNP scholarly project was titled Improving Nurses Knowledge of Delirium in Post Acute Care and Implementation of the RADAR Screening Tool at two Post Acute Care Facilities in the United States.

Dr. Lewallen has been recognized by the National Hartford Center for Gerontological Nursing Excellence (NHCGNE) as a Distinguished Educator in Gerontological Nursing and has been a member of the Vanderbilt NHCGNE since 2014. She is an active member in the Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association (GAPNA) where she is the web-editor and serves on the board as the treasurer for the Middle Tennessee GAPNA Chapter.

Dr. Lewallen has worked with the Vanderbilt Center for Quality Aging on multiple projects. Of which the topics include polypharmacy and deprescribing, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia’s, and COVID-19 in post acute care and long term care communities. Her clinical work is with the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Division of Geriatrics where she is an Assistant in Medicine and has worked with the post acute care patient population since 2009.