CHMP Welcomes Senior Fellow Margaret (Peggy) Rafferty, RN DNP MPH MA

CHMP welcomes Senior Fellow Margaret (Peggy) Rafferty.  Dr. Rafferty’s project will involve increasing nursing students awareness about environmental health issues. More details about her project can be read here.

Peggy Rafferty

Margaret (Peggy) Rafferty RN DNP MPH MA completed her pre-licensure nursing education at State University of New York Plattsburgh (1975) and subsequently received a Master of Arts in Nursing from New York University (1978), a Masters in Public Health from the Columbia University-Mailman School of Public Health (1987), and a Doctorate in Nursing Practice (DNP) from Case Western Reserve Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing (2009).  She has a long career as both a nursing educator and clinician. She is currently an Associate Professor at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology (NYCCT).

She started her career in 1975 as a staff nurse in surgery and geriatric rehabilitation at the Bronx’s Montefiore Hospital. After completing her first master’s degree she practiced as a clinical specialist in community psychiatry in St. Luke’s-Roosevelt’s innovative community-based programs.  For seven years at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt, she worked in substance abuse and mental health clinics, and single room occupancy hotels (SRO’s) as part of an interdisciplinary team.  Outside of work, she engaged in political advocacy in an effort to improve the care and treatment of the chronically mentally ill, especially as they were evicted from SRO’s and swelled the ranks of the homeless.  She collaborated with Robert M Hayes, a lawyer and founder of the Coalition for the Homeless, and later served on its Board of Directors while starting the Coalition’s Health Committee. In 1985, she became the nurse manager at the St. Francis Residence, still recognized nationally as a residential care model for the chronically mentally ill. During that time she wrote a number of articles in nursing and other journals, textbook chapters, edited the Coalition’s Shelter Worker’s Handbook and submitted testimony to a Congressional committee investigating the issue of homelessness.

In 1987, she began her career in nursing education at the Long Island College Hospital School of Nursing.  For nearly three decades, Dr. Rafferty has been a dedicated and well-regarded nursing educator instructing thousand of nursing students in courses in psychiatry, community and professional issues. She currently teaches an innovative Urban Health course with clinical placements in a broad range of community-based settings in the baccalaureate program of the New York City College of Technology.  She has served on both NYCCT’s and the CUNY central Institutional Review Board.  She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles in nursing. An article based on her doctoral research on the clinical competencies of the second-degree accelerated nurse was published in the Journal of Nursing Education. 

Dr. Rafferty is the recipient of several awards and honors, including induction as a Fellow to the New York Academy of Medicine; the Circle of Mercy Award from Mercy Center, a South Bronx-based community organization, the New York State Bar Association’s Courts and Community Award;  and a National Institute of Mental Health Traineeship.  She is the recipient of several grants and collaborated with colleagues to introduce the highly successful Vermont Nurses in Partnership model to Brooklyn.

Dr. Rafferty is active in a number of public interest and community advocacy activities. She is a member of United for Action (UFA), Food and Water Watch, the League of Woman Voters and the National Resources Defense Council, four organizations that raise public awareness about the dangers of using the hydraulic fracturing process in oil and gas drilling.  Through her personal involvement Dr. Rafferty has tried to highlight the public health consequences of hydrofracking in a number of ways. This has included a radio appearance on WBAI’s Healthstyles; the submission of testimony to the New York State Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation and New York City Council, and authoring one of the first peer-reviewed nursing articles on this important issue.  She is also a member of Physicians for a National Health Plan that advocates for single payer health insurance.

CHMP welcomes Senior Fellow Margaret (Peggy) Rafferty.