Teresa Graziano, Ph.D., RN

BIO

Dr. Teresa Graziano is a registered nurse with clinical experience in hematology, oncology, and hospice. After completing their doctoral training at the University of Connecticut, they joined the Department of Nursing at the University of Vermont in 2024. Their areas of teaching include community/public health nursing and research.

Dr. Graziano’s primary research focus is on the embodiment of pain in sex, sexual, and gender minorities. They define pain broadly, as pain can be sensed and influenced through both physiological and psychological mechanisms. Examples of physiological pain include nociception, or the neural processing of painful stimuli, while psychological mechanisms include psychache and suicidality, gender dysphoria, mental illness, and pain catastrophizing. Their research is underpinned by the minority stress model, which suggests that forms of discrimination negatively impact the physical and mental health of marginalized groups, leading to the emergence of health disparities.

Dr. Graziano has a secondary scholarship interest in nursing philosophy. They were one of two fellows in the 2023-2024 Center for Nursing Philosophy fellowship program, through the University of California, Irvine. Their scholarship utilizes Crip theory, a disability justice framework, to reconceptualize how nurses perceive, teach about, and care for individuals with disabilities. The goal of this work is to improve the health of all individuals who will, at some point, seek medical care due to a temporary or permanent disability or health condition. Their philosophical scholarship is informed by queer, antiracist, Critical, intersectional, and feminist theories. This work connects to their primary research interest in interesting ways. The embodiment of disabilities may result from health disparities that contribute to disproportionately high rates of debilitating chronic illness in the sex, sexual, and gender minority population. Conversely, nonnormative differences in sex traits, sexual orientation, and gender identity have historically been pathologized and medicalized in ways that made these natural variations in human existence appear disabling. Their philosophical scholarship teases out how sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability may intersect to worsen healthcare experiences of people who are multiply marginalized.

Dr. Graziano has a deep commitment to their students. They lead public health nursing lecture and clinical, in which students are encouraged to expand their worldview, challenge preconceptions about health in Western medicine, and learn to innovate within systems that historically contribute to health disparities. They also mentor undergraduate students interested in nursing research and graduate students completing master's or doctoral work.

Awards and Achievements

• 2025 Dean’s Teaching Innovation Award, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Vermont
• 2023-2024 Fellow, Center for Nursing Philosophy, University of California, Irvine
• 2020 - Jean Watson Award – Oncology Recipient, Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven Hospital