Joan M. Lappe PhD, RN, FAAN

Dr. Lappe holds the Criss/Beirne Endowed Chair in Nursing and has a secondary appointment as Professor of Medicine at Creighton University. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Dr. Lappe serves as a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and for numerous scientific journals. In 2010, she received the Ada Sue Hinshaw Award given by the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing in recognition of the contributions made by a nurse scientist that improve health care.

Dr. Lappe’s primary research interest is determination of the effects of nutrition and physical activity on promotion of health and prevention of disease. She has had continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1994 as the Principal Investigator on numerous grants. Recently, she and her team completed a study, funded by the NIH, that found that vitamin D and calcium supplementation decreased the risk of all-type cancer by 60%. Dr. Lappe is currently funded by the National Cancer Institute to conduct further studies of the efficacy of vitamin D and calcium in the prevention of cancer.