Caroline Dorsen

Caroline (she/her) is a nurse scholar, educator, and clinician whose passion is the intersection of health, substance use and social justice. She is currently serving as Associate Dean for Clinical Partnerships at Rutgers University School of Nursing, where she is on the faculty of both the schools of nursing and public health.

Caroline has worked as a nurse practitioner for over 20 years. She currently serves as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for Community Health Network (CHN) in NYC and is a Senior Associate Editor of the journal Annals of LGBTQ Public and Population Health. She has been a member of numerous diversity, equity and inclusion task forces, including for the Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, and is a member of the Psychiatric Mental Health Expert Panel for the American Academy of Nursing. Along with her research related to the impact of stigma and bias on health inequities, Caroline’s research has focused on the underground use of psychedelic medicines for health and healing. Her current study is examining nurses’ attitudes towards the use of psychedelics in clinical settings. She has authored or coauthored numerous papers on the use of psychedelics, including the first article on psychedelics in the American Journal of Nursing since 1964 (with co-authors Andrew Penn, Stephanie Van Hope and William (Billy) Rosa). She spoke at the 14^th annual Horizons Psychedelic Conference on the role of community in psychedelic science and was an invited panelist and expert reviewer for the 2022 National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s workshop “Exploring Psychedelics and Entactogens as Treatments for Psychiatric Disorders.”

Caroline received a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley, a BS in Nursing at NYU, a Master’s degree at Yale, and a PhD in Nursing Research and Theory at NYU. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in translational science at NYU Langone Health. In recognition of her expertise as an educator, Caroline was the 2020 recipient of the Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award at NYU Meyers College of Nursing. In 2020, she was also the recipient of NYU’s MLK, Jr Faculty Award sponsored by the President and Provost for “exemplifying the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through teaching excellence, leadership, social justice activism, and community building.” At Rutgers, she received the “Beloved Community” Award in 2021 with colleagues from around the university for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing in 2021.