Mary G. Boland

Mary Goretti Boland, MSN, RN, FAAN is a Pediatric Nurse and Doctor of Public Health, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. She is nationally known for her work developing innovative healthcare programs for underserved children with HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases. In 1978, Boland staffed an innovative mobile health screening van for the Ironbound Community Health Project in Newark, New Jersey. She became director of the AIDS program at Children's Hospital of New Jersey and served as the coordinator for the Children's AIDS program (CHAP) at United Hospitals Medical Center in Newark. She served on the AIDS Advisory Committee in New Jersey and the National AIDS Advisory Committee. The United States Department of Health and Human Services gave her an award for her work in pediatric AIDS/HIV treatment.

Boland was the François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Nursing and served as Associate Dean at the Rutgers University College of Nursing. With James Oleske, she co-founded the interdisciplinary François-Xavier Bagnoud Center, of which she became Director. She was the Dean of the Nancy Atmospera-Walsh School of Nursing at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa from 2005 to 2021.

Early life and education
Boland was born in Ireland. Her family moved to the Philadelphia area when she was a small child.

Boland is a graduate of St. Hubert's High School in Philadelphia.

She received her bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, and her master's degree in pediatric nursing from Seton Hall University.

She holds a Doctor of Public Health degree from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Boland is a member of Sigma Theta Tau international and is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

Career
Boland was a longtime member of the New Jersey State Nurses Association. Early in her nursing career, Boland was a nurse practitioner who staffed a mobile health screening van for the Ironbound Community Health Project. From its inception in 1978, the program provided screening tests, immunizations, health education and followup care at no cost for children who were medically in-need living in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark.

In 1987, physician James Oleske and nurse practitioner Mary Boland co-founded the Children's Hospital AIDS Program (CHAP) at Children's Hospital of New Jersey. Boland became the director of the AIDS program In that role, Boland advocated alongside Associate Director for AIDS Research Anthony Fauci for children with AIDS to be able to participate in clinical trials of experimental drugs such as the antiretroviral Dideoxyinosine. While director, she also helped to coordinate the Children's AIDS program (CHAP) at United Hospitals Medical Center in Newark. She developed an intensive month-long training program in pediatric AIDS, drawing doctors and nurses internationally from countries including Cuba, South America, Europe, Myanmar, Africa and the former Soviet Union.

Because of her extensive work with AIDS and HIV, she served on the New Jersey Pediatric AIDS Advisory Committee under governor Christine Todd Whitman. In 1989, as committee chair, she published the report Generations in Jeopardy: Responding to HIV in Children, Women and Adolescents in New Jersey. In 1995, she co-edited Children, Families, and HIV/AIDS: Psychosocial and Therapeutic Issues, outlining a family-centered approach to AIDS care. Also in 1995, she was named to the National AIDS Advisory Committee by President Bill Clinton.

In 1996, Boland became the first nurse to hold a named chair, the François-Xavier Bagnoud Chair of Nursing at the School of Nursing of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (later Rutgers University College of Nursing). She served as Associate Dean for community programs at the Rutgers University College of Nursing.

Together with James Oleske, Boland was the co-founder and director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center, an interdisciplinary center at the medical school.

Boland was the Dean of the Nancy Atmospera-Walsh School of Nursing at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa from 2005 to 2021. She was the longest serving dean in the history of that school. During her tenure, the Hawaii State Center for Nursing grew and fostered legislative changes that assisted the nursing profession via mandates such as continuing education programs, practice authority for advanced practice registered nurses, and tax credits for nursing preceptors.

Boland was one the designers of the University of Hawaiʻi Translational Health Simulations Center, a simulation-based education clinic for interdisciplinary biomedical and behavioral health and education that opened in 2012.

In 2014, Boland founded the Hawaii Keiki: Healthy and Ready to Learn program, a collaboration between the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the Hawaii State Department of Education where nurses and nurse practitioners are embedded in the public schools in order to address any unmet health needs that they find among the students.

Awards
On July 14, 1988, Boland was awarded a special award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, on the basis of her work in pediatric AIDS/HIV treatment.

In 1996, Boland and James Oleske received the New Jersey State Nurses Association's President's Award, given to those "whose commitment and dedication to the profession of nursing and quality health care represent a source of inspiration for nurses everywhere".

In 2017, she received the 2017 Executive Award from the Healthcare Association of Hawaii.

Selected publications

 * Davis KF, Loos JR, Boland MG. Five Years and Moving Forward: A Successful Joint Academic-Practice Public Partnership to Improve the Health of Hawaii's Schoolchildren. J Sch Health. 2021 July;91(7): pages 584–591. 10.1111/josh.13034.
 * Storm DS, Boland MG, Gortmaker SL, He Y, Skurnick J, Howland L, Oleske, JM. Protease inhibitor combination therapy, severity of illness, and quality of life among children with perinatally acquired HIV-1 infection. Pediatrics. 2005;115(2): pages e173-e182. 10.1542/peds.2004-1693
 * Weglarz M, Boland M. Family-centered nursing care of the perinatally infected mother and child living with HIV infection. Journal for specialists in pediatric nursing : JSPN. 2005;10(4): pages 161–170. 10.1111/j.1744-6155.2005.00037.x
 * Report from the New Jersey Pediatric AIDS Advisory Committee, Mary Boland, R.N., M.S.N, Chairman, Generations in Jeopardy: Responding to HIV in Children, Women and Adolescents in New Jersey, UMDNJ AIDS Collection (Pediatric AIDS Advisory Committee, 1989).
 * Report from the New Jersey Pediatric AIDS Advisory Committee, Mary Boland, R.N., M.S.N, Chairman, Generations in Jeopardy: Responding to HIV in Children, Women and Adolescents in New Jersey, UMDNJ AIDS Collection (Pediatric AIDS Advisory Committee, 1989).