Transcultural Nursing Society

2007 Research Award Recipient

Valera A. Hascup, MSN, RNC, CCES

Valera A. Hascup, MSN, RNC, CCES  has been awarded the Transcultural Nursing Society’s 2007 Research Award for her research proposal entitled “Understanding the cultural expressions, meanings, and experiences of Mexican American women during the postpartum period: An Ethnonursing study conceptualized within Leininger’s Culture Care Theory.”

Ms. Hascup is currently faculty at Kean University, Union, New Jersey. She teaches Nursing Research and Nursing Science (Transcultural Nursing) at the Graduate level, and the Foundations of Transcultural Nursing at the Undergraduate level. She is Director of the Transcultural Nursing Institute at Kean, and has responsibilities to promote transcultural nursing and cultural competence both in nursing and related healthcare fields and organizations. Ms. Hascup serves as a member of the NJ Governor's educational task force on postpartum depression. She will be the Keynote Speaker at the Kean University Graduate Symposium in April, a program that showcases the undergraduate and graduate research projects.

 As Director of the Transcultural Nursing Institute, she is involved in research, and will be conducting a quantitative study starting next fall "Screening for Postpartum Depression Among Low Income Hispanic Women" that will use Beck's Postpartum Depression Predictors Inventory-Revised to screen for risk factors in the antepartum period and the Postpartum Depression Screening Scale, Spanish Version that will screen for PPD postpartum. Conceptual frameworks will be Kleinman's explanatory model of illness, and Leininger's cultural care theory.

Ms. Hascup is currently a doctoral student at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. Her dissertation focus is "Understanding the Cultural Expressions, Meanings and Experiences of Mexican American Women during the Postpartum Period."  This research study is a qualitative study using Leininger's Cultural Care Theory and the Ethnonursing Method. Her anticipated date of completion is May 2008. The Transcultural Nursing Society’s Research Award will go towards funding her dissertation research.

She has earned a Diploma in Nursing from Holy Name Hospital School of Nursing, Teaneck, NJ; a BSN from Felician College, Lodi, NJ; a MSN from Kean University, Union NJ; and a Postmaster's Certificate, Nursing Education, Rutger's, NJ.  Ms. Hascup also has earned a Postmaster's Certificate in  Transcultural Nursing from Duquesne University. 

Ms. Hascup states that “Nursing was a second career for me. My first career was in New York City as a translator-interpreter for the African American Institute, a philanthropic institution devoted to educating peoples from third world countries, and translator-interpreter for Time-Life Incorporated, NYC, in the International Sales Division. I am from a non-dominant culture, and I believe this has been the impetus and interest in my studying languages and culture.”