Board of Directors
Candidate For:
Shanon Brickner
PhD, MSN, RN
Goal Statement
My goal as an AFN Board member would be to strengthen connections among research, practice, education, and policy while expanding opportunities for members to participate in scholarship and interdisciplinary collaboration. I am particularly interested in building bridges between forensic nursing and correctional health, public health, substance use and overdose prevention, criminal justice, and trauma-informed care. I would work to make research more accessible and actionable for clinicians and communities while creating opportunities for clinicians' experiences to inform research priorities. Ultimately, I hope to help AFN expand its impact by connecting people, evidence, and practice in ways that improve responses to trauma. I am also interested in pursuing and connecting workplace violence, including bullying as an important topic in our work.
Biography
Shanon Brickner, PhD, RN, is a nurse educator and researcher whose work focuses on the intersections of trauma, substance use, criminal legal system involvement, health equity, and systems improvement. She earned her PhD in Nursing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and holds an MSN in Leadership and Management and a BSN from the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. She has also completed graduate education with certification in trauma-informed care.
Dr. Brickner's clinical and professional nursing experience spans medical-surgical nursing, outpatient infusion and triage, occupational health and primary care, nursing education, and academic leadership and service. These experiences have shaped her interest in understanding how healthcare, social, and criminal legal systems interact and how those systems can be improved for individuals experiencing trauma, substance use, stigma, and other barriers to care.
Her doctoral research examined fatal drug overdose among individuals with histories of criminal legal system involvement. Using linked data from multiple sources, her research explored the prevalence and characteristics of criminal legal system involvement among overdose decedents, with particular attention to jail incarceration and the vulnerabilities associated with incarceration and community reentry. Her broader scholarship includes overdose prevention, harm reduction, correctional health, trauma-informed care, nursing education, accessibility, and organizational improvement.
As a nursing instructor, Dr. Brickner teaches across undergraduate nursing programs and has led initiatives involving curriculum redesign, quality improvement, accessibility, and evidence-based teaching practices. She approaches both research and education through a systems lens, with an emphasis on identifying gaps, using evidence to understand their causes, and translating findings into practical improvements.
Dr. Brickner is committed to interdisciplinary and community-engaged scholarship. Her work has included collaboration with academic researchers, healthcare professionals, criminal justice partners, and community stakeholders. She is particularly interested in creating stronger connections among researchers, clinicians, educators, policymakers, and community organizations so that research findings move beyond publication and contribute to meaningful changes in practice and policy.
Within the Academy of Forensic Nursing, Dr. Brickner participates in the Violence & Behavior Special Interest Group and Research Committee, starting in September. She views forensic nursing as uniquely positioned to bridge healthcare, trauma response, public health, and the criminal legal system. Through her involvement with AFN, she hopes to contribute her expertise in research, education, systems improvement, correctional health, and overdose prevention while collaborating with forensic nursing professionals to advance evidence-informed and trauma-responsive care.