Hafeeza’s program of research focuses on the history of race and racism in American nursing and healthcare to better understand population health and healthcare practice today. Hafeeza is in the early stages of converting her dissertation manuscript on Philadelphia’s Black-run Mercy-Douglass Hospital School of Nursing into a book. The study uses Mercy-Douglass as a case study to explore the condition of the longstanding social contract between the Black nurse, hospital training institution, and community in the context of healthcare desegregation. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on Race, Science, and Society, Hafeeza is working with Professor Dorothy Roberts on the Penn Medicine and the Afterlives of Slavery Project (PMAS), with the goal of disseminating the project’s findings and proposals to the Penn community and the broader public. Hafeeza is also investigating the link between Penn’s Hospital Nurse Training School and Medical School, the potential transmission of race-based medical knowledge in nursing education, and the implications for current nursing practice.
Hafeeza’s research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the American Nurses Foundation, and the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, and other sources. She earned a PhD in Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, a MS from New York University and a BSN from Florida State University. Hafeeza is an advanced practice registered nurse who specializes in surgical and perioperative nursing and nursing education.
Her research interests include History of American Nursing and Medicine, Black Women’s Labor History, Nursing Education, Oral History, History of Community Health and Activism, and Global Health.