Sandra K. Cesario, Ph.D., RNC, FAAN

Cornaro Professor, PhD Program Coordinator - Houston Center

Sandra Cesario, PhD came to TWU in 1999 and has served as the PhD Program Coordinator on the Houston campus since 2005. In January 2014, she also assumed responsibility for the DNP program. Other roles at TWU include Director of Research (2002-2005) and the Interim Director of the Center for Global Nursing Scholarship (2011-2012). Current faculty responsibilities include teaching doctoral-level courses such as Multicultural Nursing and Global Women's Health as well as the supervision of doctoral dissertations.

Cesario is a woman’s health specialist with more than 40 years of clinical, research, education, and policy development experience. She has provided care to women and newborns throughout the United States and internationally and was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing in 2008. Cesario has held leadership positions in professional nursing organizations such as Sigma Theta Tau International, Texas Nurses Association District 9, Texas Medical Center Women’s Health Network, Women’s Health Imitative of Texas, and the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN). She was awarded AWHONN’s Distinguished Professional Service Award in 2012. 

Other professional experience includes developing and coordinating the OB Nurse Residency Program for the USPHS Indian Health Service (1989-1992) and employment as a contractor for JHPIEGO (an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University) and the Supreme Council of Universities in the country of Egypt (2004-2007). The USAID/Cairo Health Strategic Objective, Healthier Planned Families, focused on improving the overall quality, availability, and use of key services in family planning, reproductive health, child survival, infectious diseases, maternal health, and emergency medicine. In addition, she provided research consultation to nurses in St. Petersburg, Russia through an affiliation with the Russian Nurses Association (2005-2010) and education consultation to nursing schools in India. 

Cesario’s program of research includes violence against women, reproductive decision-making, ovarian cancer, nursing education, second stage labor management, newborn abandonment, environmental design, and cultural aspects of childbearing and birth. She has presented her research findings throughout the US and in Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Peru, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, The Netherlands, and Vietnam.

Page last updated 5:21 PM, November 3, 2021