Ashley Darcy-Mahoney

Dr. Darcy-Mahoney, PhD, NNP, FAAN, a neonatal nurse practitioner and researcher, has worked throughout her career to advance nursing research, education, and practice, with a focus on neonatology, infant health, and developmental pediatrics. Her research has led to the creation of programs that improve health and developmental outcomes for at-risk and preterm infants.

As a tenured associate professor of nursing. Dr. Darcy-Mahoney advances the body of research in infant health and developmental outcomes in high-risk infants with a focus on understanding the early brain and development trajectories in this population. In addition to her work with the institute, she conducts interdisciplinary research through “Talk With Me Baby” a multi-agency initiative using the nursing workforce to educate parents in the importance of talking and engaging with their babies in early infancy. Her research seeks to improve early childhood outcomes for these infants, most recently through language interventions that improve future literacy and cognitive development.

Dr. Darcy-Mahoney is a Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Nurse Faculty Scholar and with her most recent grant from the RWJ Foundation, she is pursuing outcomes research in preterm infants by comparing developmental trajectories of children raised in a bilingual environment against those raised in a monolingual environment.

In 2020, Dr. Darcy-Mahoney served as the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) Distinguished Nurse Scholar-in-Residence, where she played a vital role in the development of the Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity. The Scholar-in-Residence program ensures the inclusion of nursing perspectives in national health policy discussions, aligning with NAM’s mission to provide evidence-based solutions and shape policies to address social determinants of health and promote public health.

She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nurses, a 2017 Josiah Macy Scholar, was named among the Top 25 Pediatric Nursing Professors by nursepractitionerschools.com, and has earned numerous awards, including the 2014 March of Dimes Nurse of the Year, Florida Association of Neonatal Nurses President’s Award and the Lillian Sholtis Brunner Award for Innovation from her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.