The Invest in Nursing grant has had great success over the past three years in the partnership between UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing and Piedmont Health Services, Inc., with three cohorts of Student Scholars from UNC Chapel Hill, and with three cohorts of Faculty Fellows from across the State of North Carolina. This program is a time-limited grant funded opportunity, provided by the Health Resources and Services Administration, and will no longer continue programming in this current iteration after the 2021-2022 cohort year. It is our hope that other educational entities will use Invest in Nursing as a blueprint for implementing similar programming. Reach Out

Cara Winstead, BSN, MPH

Clinical Instructor

During her time at the School of Nursing, Ms. Winstead has been a Clinical Instructor for BSN and ABSN students in the public health nursing course. In this role she works with the students at their clinical sites as they conduct community assessments, plan and implement interventions for the population they are assigned. She has also been an instructor in Health Assessment labs and a Nurse Planner within the Center for Lifelong Learning where her responsibility has been to plan continuing education programs for practicing nurses.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College) in 1982 and a master’s in public health from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991, becoming certified in occupational health nursing in 1993.

During her 37 years in nursing, Ms. Winstead has primarily worked as an occupational health nurse in manufacturing, corporate, consulting and hospital occupational health settings. Her experience includes providing direct care to employees for occupational and non-occupational injuries and illnesses, policy and procedure development, workers’ compensation and medical disability case management, OSHA recordkeeping and health/safety training.