Rate My Professor SarahAnn McFaden

SarahAnn M. McFadden, PhD, RN, CPN, serves as Assistant Professor and MSN Program Lead in the School of Nursing at Pacific Lutheran University since 2022. A proud alumnus of PLU with a BS in Psychology (2011, magna cum laude), she earned her BSN from Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing (2012) and PhD in Nursing Science from the University of Washington (2019). Her clinical experience includes serving as a Registered Nurse on the Surgical Unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital (2013-2015) and as Vaccine Coordinator at the University of Washington Pediatric Care Center (2015-2018). Post-PhD, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University’s Institute for Global Health across the School of Medicine and School of Nursing (2019-2021), contributing to research on vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also held graduate teaching and research assistant roles at the University of Washington in nursing, sociology, and epidemiology.

McFadden’s research specializations include vaccine acceptance and policy, public health, COVID-19, health equity, nursing education, competency-based education, and pediatric nursing. She has produced numerous peer-reviewed publications in leading journals, serving as lead facilitator and substantial writer for the Lancet Commission on Vaccine Refusal, Acceptance, and Demand in the USA (2021), co-authoring "Determinants of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in the US" (EClinicalMedicine, 2020), "Perceptions of the adult US population regarding the novel coronavirus outbreak" (PLoS One, 2020), COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among healthcare workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2021), and in the United Arab Emirates (IJID Regions, 2021), as well as reviews on strategies promoting equity in COVID-19 vaccine uptake for Black, Hispanic, and undocumented communities (Journal of Urban Health and Journal of Community Health, 2022). At PLU, she has received the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence and DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty (both 2025), was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Nursing Scholar (2016-2019), and holds membership in Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. She contributes to committees including the School of Nursing Curriculum & Instruction Committee, Research Day Committee, and Long Range Planning Committee.