Assistant Professor Jannyse Tapp, MSN’09, DNP’11, was awarded the VUSN Award for Recognition of Faculty Achievement in Social Justice during the 2025 MLK Commemorative Lecture for her work promoting diversity, advancing health equity and combating racism within health care and nurse education.
“Dr. Jannyse Tapp’s leadership, scholarship and commitment to promoting health equity and anti-racism make her an ideal recipient for the VUSN Award for Faculty Achievement in Social Justice,” wrote one of her nominators. “She is a deeply involved leader here at VUSN, in our region and across the United States. Her work improves nursing education locally and nationally and demonstrates that Vanderbilt is an exemplar for moving social justice forward.”
Tapp is a leader of school-wide initiatives focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and educating on the significance of social determinants of health. She is currently the Project Director on “Advanced Nursing Education Workforce Program,” a HRSA grant that improves advanced practice nursing education and increases recruitment and retention in rural, tribal and medically underserved populations.
Tapp joined VUSN’s FNP faculty in 2014. Her primary teaching responsibilities include Advanced Health Assessment, Advanced Pharmacotherapeutics and both Practicum courses for the FNP student. With her input, the course includes enhanced, foundational content to equip students with the knowledge and skills to appropriately assess for significant social determinants of health factors that may influence health outcomes during patient interviews. Additionally, she co-coordinates the Poverty Simulation, an experiential simulation that exposes students, faculty and staff to the realities of poverty.
“Dr. Tapp has consistently demonstrated a passion for promoting clinician education, immersive exposure and advocacy related to the social determinants of health and their impact on marginalized populations,” wrote another nominator. “She has empowered our FNP students to become advocates for social justice, equipping them with the knowledge and skills necessary to address health disparities in their future clinical practice.”
Tapp also practices in a primary care clinic that serves the homeless and underserved population in Nashville. The clinic also serves as an interprofessional practice that helps to provide quality educational experiences to nursing, pharmacy, social work and medical students. Before transitioning to her current practice, she practiced for five years in a primary care clinic.