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Dr. Patricia T. Alpert is an assistant professor for the School of Nursing. She also serves as director of the school’s St. Jude MSN/FNP program, a collaborative venture between UNLV and St. Jude College in the Philippines. Dr. Alpert teaches in both the family and pediatric nurse practitioner tracks in the MSN program.
Dr. Alpert's program of research is concentrated in obesity and the alternative exercise effects on balance, memory and mood in older adults. The long-term goal of her research is to strengthen knowledge in the areas of balance and obesity so that plausible interventions can be initiated. Her current research on balance focuses on balance across the decades (20-60+ years), with goals to identify the decade of life in which balance begins to decline and to identify which of the three systems involved in balance (visual, vestibular or somatosensory) is affected initially. Utilizing her own prior research on vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency, Dr. Alpert hopes to assess the relationship of associated muscle weakness due to vitamin D deficiency and declining balance. Her current research on obesity centers on both the perceptions and attitudes of obese/overweight individuals and interventions to maintain weight loss. She has received both intramural and extramural grant funds to support research in these areas. Her published research reports and clinical articles have appeared in nursing, pediatric medicine and physical therapy journals.
Dr. Alpert is a fellow of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and holds national certification as both a pediatric and family nurse practitioner. She is also a clinical nurse specialist (CNS) in maternal-child nursing. She has reviewed numerous articles for nursing journals such as the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioner and Biologic Research for Nursing. She has also reviewed numerous chapters for pediatric and women's health nursing textbooks. Dr. Alpert was recently a co-issue editor for the nursing journal Home Health Care Management and Practice, which focused on human diversity and human development. She served on the national committee of the Interstate Postgraduate Medical Association (IPMA), Alliance in Women's Health, to develop informational tools for hormone replacement therapy.
Voice: (702) 895-3360
