MPH Faculty

Background

Yvonne Johnston is an associate professor and founding director of the Master of Public Health program at Binghamton University. She maintains clinical practice as a family nurse practitioner at the Broome County Health Department.

Johnston conducted and authored the Broome County Community Health Assessment in 2009, 2013 and 2016. She served as consultant to the NYS Southern Tier Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) Program in 2014, conducting part of the community-health assessment for the nine-county region. As a grant-writing consultant, she was instrumental in winning a U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Lead Hazard Control Program in Broome County (three-year, $3.2 million award). She has conducted program evaluation for numerous Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiatives including Steps to a HealthierNY; Strategic Alliance for Health; Sodium Reduction in Communities; Creating Healthy Schools and Communities; and the Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths & Injuries (STEADI) Program. Her evaluative work has resulted in publications, presentations and dissemination products for each of these projects.

Over the past 25 years, she has forged collaborative working relationships with most health and human service agencies and community-based organization leaders in the surrounding area including the Rural Health Network, Mothers and Babies Perinatal Network, HealthLinkNY and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. She serves on the IT and Data Governance Committee of Care Compass Network and is familiar with the population-health and care-management platforms.

She has provided guidance on research projects for area hospital systems and community-based organizations as well as overseeing student capstone projects and dissertations across a variety of health-related settings. She is proficient at developing survey tools, interview protocols, logic models, process and outcome evaluation plans, as well as conducting literature reviews, preparing Institutional Review Board applications, selecting indicators and outcome metrics, designing templates for online data collection and developing databases for electronic reporting. She has prepared longitudinal data sets from divergent sources, analyzed weighted samples and performed multivariate modeling on cohort data.

Johnston is knowledgeable about the social determinants of health and their impact on healthcare utilization, as well as the mechanisms of disease and preventive interventions for a broad range of infectious diseases and chronic conditions. In her most recent publication, Implementation of the Stopping Elderly Accidents Deaths and Injuries (STEADI) initiative in primary care: An outcome evaluation, analysis of extracted electronic health record (EHR), data revealed reductions in hospitalizations associated with establishment of a fall plan of care for older adults screened as being at risk for fall. Her expertise in grant writing; epidemiology; population health; and evaluation of comprehensive, multifaceted approaches to chronic-disease risk reduction has contributed significantly to improving the health and well-being of area residents and to expanding the scientific evidence for public health interventions.

Education

• DrPH (public health-epidemiology), University at Albany
• MPH (public health-epidemiology), University at Albany
• MS in nursing, Binghamton University
• BS in nursing, Binghamton University

Research Interests

• Public health
• Epidemiology
• Nursing
• Population health
• Program evaluation
• Chronic disease risk reduction
• Health promotion
• Fall prevention among older adults
• Evidence-based practice
• Data analytics
• Social determinants of health
• Translational research

Clinical Interests

• Works as a nurse practitioner (part time) with the Broome County Health Department and the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) in Cooperstown, N.Y.
• Oncology nursing
• Adult health
• Employee/occupational health
• Tuberculosis control

Teaching Interests

• Advanced pathophysiology
• Advanced pharmacology
• Advanced diagnostics

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Professional activities

• Trustee, Foundation of New York State Nurses, Inc.
• Founding member, American Nurses Association-New York (ANA-NY)
• One of three ANA representatives to the Quad Council of Public Health Nursing Organizations
• Member, American Public Health Association (APHA)
• Member, Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing (Zeta Iota Chapter)
• Member, Professional Nurses Association of South Central New York
• Chair, Broome County Community Health Assessment Steering Committee
• Committee member, NYS Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP)
• Committee member, NYS Population Health Improvement Project (PHIP)
• Committee member, Healthy Lifestyles Coalition
• Committee member, United Way Outcomes Evaluation