Leaders

Dr. Mary Foley, PhD, RN, FAAN

Safe in Common Chairperson

Dr. Foley is one of the world’s foremost experts on healthcare worker safety. She is the Director at the Center for Nursing Research and Innovation at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Nursing and is a fellow at the American Academy of Nursing (AAN). . A registered nurse for more than 35 years, Dr. Foley was one of the first healthcare workers to combat the emerging HIV-AIDS epidemic during her work at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco during the 1980s. She played a key role in securing the passage in California of the first state-based laws in the U.S. mandating the use safety medical devices. Afterwards, she joined other nursing colleagues to campaign for the adoption of the Federal Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act. Elected President of the American Nurses Association (ANA) in 2000, she was in the Oval Office of the White House when President Bill Clinton enacted the Act into law. She continues to write and lecture about healthcare policy, improving the workplace, and promoting safe care for workers and patients nationally and internationally. In 2010, she received her PhD in nursing with her dissertation on the topic of needlestick injuries and prevention policies.