Karen J. Foli

Dr. Foli’s work is bound together by the theme of care rendered through the lens of psychological trauma. With this thread, she has received funding from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (trauma-informed parenting for kinship parents), the National Council of State Boards of Nursing: Center for Regulatory Excellence (relationships between trauma and substance use in nurses), and private foundations (exploring parental postadoption depression). Dr. Foli is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.

She is author or coauthor of five, well-received, health-related books. Her most recent book, The Influence of Psychological Trauma in Nursing, co-authored by John R. Thompson, MD (Sigma, 2019), is intended to build resiliency and post-traumatic growth in student and new nurses who face considerable firsthand and secondary trauma. Published in 2017, Nursing Care of Adoption and Kinship Families: A Clinical Guide for Advanced Practice Nurses, received the American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA) Award for Media in 2018 and is meant to strengthen non-traditional families who are often exposed to significant trauma.

Dr. Foli is also the recipient of numerous research and teaching awards, including the Charles B. Murphy Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award from Purdue University, which is the highest award bestowed for undergraduate teaching at the university. For her work as an educator, Dr. Foli was inducted into the Purdue University Book of Great Teachers in 2018. She also received the Sigma Theta Tau Honorary Society of Nursing, Delta Omicron Chapter Award for Outstanding Mentoring in 2017.

Currently, Dr. Foli is an Associate Professor, School of Nursing, West Lafayette, Indiana. She received her nursing degrees from Indiana State University and Indiana University School of Nursing, Indianapolis, and her PhD in Communications Research from the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign.