معرفی
Dr. Jonna L. Morris is an Assistant Professor in the Health & Community Systems department at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing. Her research program focuses on generating knowledge to improve care and clinical outcomes for women with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), with particular interest in how social roles and norms affect subjective perceptions of OSA symptomology.
Dr. Morris is funded by the American Association of Sleep Medicine to test a woman-to-woman peer support intervention for women initiating continuous positive airway pressure treatment. She serves as Principal Investigator on an NIH/NHLBI R01 grant (1R01HL170675-01A1, awarded September 2024) investigating OSA heterogeneity and sex differences in diagnosis, with the goal of identifying reliable biomarkers of disease severity that account for gender differences.
Her research spans Sleep Medicine, Women's Health, and Health Disparities, challenging the current diagnostic paradigm that relies primarily on the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) which underestimates women's OSA severity compared to men.
Dr. Morris teaches Community Health Nursing to undergraduate students and Health Promotion to graduate students. She regularly guest lectures on sex differences in women's health, social roles in health outcomes, and sleep and aging.
- Sleep Research Society member
- Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing member
- American Thoracic Society, Nursing Assembly (past Chair of Early Career Professional committee)
- Incoming co-Chair for the 2025/26 Planning Committee
Dr. Morris received her BA in English and Philosophy and BSN from Penn State University before earning her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Translational Research Training in Sleep Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry. She is currently accepting PhD students to mentor and continues to advance research in sleep medicine with a focus on gender disparities in diagnosis and treatment.
