By Laura Gasque
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing Professor and Interim Assistant Dean for Research and Scholarship Edwin Aroke, PhD, CRNA, FADLN, FAANA, FAAN, has been selected for the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame by Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. He joins 26 world-renowned nurse researchers being inducted into the Hall of Fame during its International Nursing Research Congress in July in Toronto.
“This year’s honorees represent the best of what nursing research can achieve,” said Lucas M. Davis, MEd, CAE, Sigma’s Chief Executive Officer. “Their scholarship has elevated the profession and connected communities locally and globally.”
The International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame recognizes nurse researchers whose sustained programs of research have delivered measurable impact from transforming clinical practice and shaping health policy, to pioneering new methods that push the boundaries of nursing science.
“Being inducted into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame is deeply humbling, not because of what it says about where I have been, but because of what it demands of where I am going,” Aroke said. “Research has always been, for me, a tool for something larger: reducing suffering, closing gaps and elevating the people who do the most demanding work in health care with the least recognition. This recognition belongs to every patient whose pain informed my science. I carry them into that hall.”
Aroke is a respected scientist in both national and international circles, specializing in leading-edge pain research, nursing scholarship, service, and clinical anesthesia practice. His NIH-funded interdisciplinary research program focuses on social determinants of pain and the role of epigenomic changes in chronic pain and pain disparities. Aroke has authored more than 70 publications and served as a manuscript reviewer for multiple peer-reviewed journals.
“The UAB School of Nursing has provided the infrastructure, intellectual community and unwavering institutional support that made this body of work possible,” Aroke said. “The mentorship, the resources and the culture of excellence here shaped not only my science but my identity as a scholar. Research does not happen in isolation; it happens in environments where excellence is expected, and curiosity is protected. I am proud to represent this school on a global stage. Nursing science is uniquely positioned to solve health care problems because nurses are where the patient actually lives, in the moments between procedures, in the spaces where pain, fear and healing intersect. That is the science I have dedicated my career to advancing, and I am grateful UAB gave me the platform to do it.”
Aroke is part of the leadership team of the UAB Center for Addiction and Pain Prevention and Intervention. He serves on the Advisory Board of the NIH HEAL PURPOSE Network, the Coordinating Center for National Pain Scientists, and is co-founder and has served as President of the Association of Cameroonian Nurse Anesthetists in America, which is improving anesthesia outcomes in Cameroon and beyond. He is Editor-in-Chief of the AANA Journal, the bi-monthly peer-reviewed publication of the AANA.
In 2024, Aroke received the International Society of Nurses in Genetics Founders’ Award for excellence in genomic science. In 2022, he received the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research 2022 Protégé Award and the 2022 Mitchell Max Award for Research Excellence from the National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium. In 2021, the AANA Foundation named Aroke the John F. Garde Researcher of the Year, and in 2020, Aroke was named AANA Didactic Instructor of the Year.
Aroke joins several UABSON faculty and alumni in the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, including Dean and Fay B. Ireland Endowed Chair Maria R. Shirey, PhD, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, ANEF, FACHE, FNAP, FAAN; University Professor Marie Bakitas, DNSc, RN, AOCN, FPCN, FAAN; alumna Eileen Chasens, PhD, RN, FAAN (PhD 2000); alumna Sandra B. Dunbar, PhD, RN, FAAN, FAHA, FPCNA (PhD 1982); alumna Susan Gennaro, PhD, RN, FAAN (PhD 1983); and alumna Wipada Kunaviktikul, PhD, RN, FAAN (PhD 1994).