Office of
Research and Creative Scholarship

2011 Siegfried H. Horn Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Scholarship

Award Category: Professions

Karen Allen 
Professor of Nursing
Chair, Department of Nursing
School of Health Professions

Karen Allen is professor of nursing and chair of the Department of Nursing. Since joining the faculty in 1998, Allen has shown an outstanding commitment to scholarly endeavors.

For over 20 years, Allen has been engaged in substance abuse and addictions research and scholarship. She has received funding from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), the National Institute on Drug Abuse for two studies of which she was co-investigator, and the Centers for Disease Control. Funding from CDC supported her development of the Barriers to Treatment Instrument, a questionnaire used in a national cross-site study required by U.S. Congress and commissioned by CSAT. For the past 5 years, Allen has been the principal evaluator on a national study on “Outcomes of Substance Abuse Treatment for Addicted Women and Their Children.”

Allen regularly presents at conferences and meetings on behalf of the U.S. Federal Government. She has given more than 50 professional seminars, workshops and poster presentations.

Allen is the author of Nursing Care of the Addicted Client (1996), and coauthor of Women’s Health Across the Lifespan: A Comprehensive Perspective (1997), Scope and Standards of Addictions Nursing Practice (2004) and Finding Freedom from Habits that Hurt (2007). She has authored 13 refereed articles, 5 non-refereed articles, and 12 book chapters. For over a decade she has served as an associate editor on the Journal of Addictions Nursing: A Journal for the Prevention and Management of Addictions.

Allen is the recipient of numerous scholarship and leadership awards. She has served on many boards including the Editorial Advisory Board for U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, Treatment Improvement Protocols (TIPS); President of the International Nurses Society on Addictions; U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention Advisory Council; and currently the Adventist Health Systems Sunbelt Corporation board.