Kathleen Gill-Hopple

Kathy Gill-Hopple received her doctorate from the University of Nebraska (2010), Masters of Science in Nursing with a focus in women’s health from Wichita State University (1994), and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from St. Louis University (1980). Gill-Hopple has worked in the women’s health field for 27 years as a clinician and educator.

In Wichita, Kansas she was on the nursing faculty at Kansas Newman University and Wichita State University teaching women’s health maternal child care. She later became the Director of the Forensic Nursing Services at Via Christi Regional Medical Center, where she founded Healthcare Haven for victims of juvenile human trafficking. This program was the first of its kind to provide immediate healthcare services to victims in a multi-disciplinary format.

Since 2012, Gill-Hopple has managed the Forensic Nursing Service program at the Medical University of South Carolina, overseeing the day-to-day management as well as grant-writing, orientation, on-going education, multi-disciplinary training, consultation and direct clinical care. At MUSC, she developed the first multidisciplinary review team to address intimate partner violence policies, procedures and clinical care, resulting in a 24 hour forensic nurse/social work response in the Emergency Department. Gill-Hopple founded the South Carolina Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Education Network, which provides education, clinical training and technical assistance to hospitals in South Carolina seeking to develop an improved response the sexual and intimate partner violence.

Gill-Hopple has received extensive training in intimate partner violence, strangulation, forensic interviewing and is a member of numerous task forces and teams addressing issues of sexual violence, intimate partner violence and human trafficking. She is a frequent expert witness, invited lecturer to nursing and medical students, emergency service providers, law enforcement agencies and is the lead instructor in the adult and pediatric sexual assault nurse examiner courses in South Carolina.