Kathleen Barr’s eyes light up the moment she enters the classroom at Guadalupe-Ines Mission School in south Omaha.
“Aren’t they beautiful children,” whispers Dr. Barr, Ph.D., M.S.N., B.S.N., associate professor in the College of Nursing and director of the UNMC College of Nursing Cosmopolitan Mobile Nursing Center (MNC).
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Dr. Kathleen Barr talks to these students about the importance of washing their hands before meals. Listening are, from left, Andrea Rodles, Miranda Valadez and Pedro Barajas, all kindergartners at Guadalupe-Ines Mission School, |
On this day Dr. Barr is visiting the school to talk to the children about the importance of washing their hands before meals.
Here Dr. Barr is in her element, doing what she loves and does the best, providing service to others.
For her commitment to community service, Dr. Barr is the first recipient of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Spirit of Community Service Award. She will receive the award at the 2004 Annual Faculty Meeting April 20 in the Durham Research Center auditorium.
Dr. Barr embodies Chancellor Harold M. Maurer’s vision of being a medical center that reaches out and builds bridges to the community, colleagues say.
“I don’t see anybody working harder out in the community,” said Susan DeVries, project nurse for the MNC.
DeVries said Dr. Barr is not just a caring person she is someone who wants to improve the quality of life for the people she encounters.
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Kathleen Barr with graduate student Lyndsay Mattke, who is assisting Dr. Barr on a research project that studies type 2 diabetes in Hispanic children. |
That includes the children and families at Guadalupe-Ines.
Through her work on the Community United for Health grant, Dr. Barr discovered that the mission school did not have a school nurse.
She immediately began to look for funding.
Fortunately, she was able to obtain some funds to provide a MNC nurse to come to the school once a week for the past two years.
“Dr. Barr has made sure our school has the services that are very much needed but that we can’t afford through the Visiting Nurses Association,” said Susan M. Aguilera-Robles, principal.
Aguilera-Robles said the commitment of Dr. Barr to the school is phenomenal.
“She has written grants to purchase supplies, like band-aids and thermometers, so our school doesn’t have to worry about paying for those items,” she said.
And recently Dr. Barr received a grant to study culture-specific type 2 diabetes prevention for urban Hispanic school children in which she will be working closely with the children and families at Guadalupe-Ines on education and prevention of this disease.
“It’s a win-win situation for our school and community,” Aguilera-Robles said.
But Dr. Barr’s community service reaches beyond south Omaha.
Dr. Barr, along with Catherine Todero, Ph.D., was instrumental in developing the Mobile Nursing Center, which came to fruition in 1993.
As co-director and now project director Dr. Barr has provided leadership, staffed and developed urban and rural community sites.
In nomination Dr. Barr for the Spirit of Community Service Award, Kathryn Fiandt, D.N.S.,
associate professor in the College of Nursing, wrote: “As a result of Dr. Barr’s leadership, the MNC has provided services in the past 10 years to over 20,000 people and continues to provide screening and education essentially free of charge.”
Dr. Fiandt went on to write: “Barr’s dedication and passionate caring for people in need helps sustain the mission to serve.”
For Dr. Barr, helping others is second nature.
Growing up in Marshall, Mo., Dr. Barr witnessed the same kind of commitment to serving others in her father and mother, who was also a nurse.
“I can remember as a young kid, my mom being at the phone giving health advice a lot,” said Dr. Barr. “Particularly to the mother of a young child with diabetes.”
Her parents would do their best, she said, to help anyone who asked.
After graduating high school Dr. Barr entered the Sisters of Mercy convent in Omaha where she continued to devote her time to helping others.
After graduating from Creighton University with a B.S.N. degree in 1965, Dr. Barr earned her M.S.N. in community health nursing from UNMC in 1982. She also holds a Ph.D. in sociology with an emphasis on family and the sociology of health from UNL.
Dr. Barr said she is excited to be able to continue her call to serve others through UNMC.
“UNMC has offered me the opportunity to continue to serve others. For that I am really grateful.”