Assistant Professor Julia Steed, MSN’10, PhD’18, received the VUSN Award for Recognition of Faculty Achievement in Social Justice at the School of Nursing’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Annual Commemorative Lecture on January 9. The award recognizes faculty who foster social justice by advocating for equal rights and opportunities for all people.
Steed is known as a leader for equity, diversity and inclusion at Vanderbilt and beyond, said Instructor Jade Vergara, who nominated her. “The breadth of her scholarship around equity, diversity and inclusion—in relation to health equity, teaching and the importance of equity and inclusion within the nursing workforce—is both inspiring and makes her an excellent candidate for this prestigious award.”
Steed is the academic director for Vanderbilt’s Family Practitioner Program. An experienced advanced practice nurse in functional/integrative medicine, Steed also studies the influence of social determinants of health including quality and individual behavior on health outcomes, and publishes and presents on health equity. She has served on the school’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee and as a member of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Simulation Task Force, as well as coordinator of the VUSN Dean’s Diversity Lecture Series and facilitator for VUSN EDI simulations.