By any measure, Mary W. Byrne, PhD, CPNP, MPH, RN, FAAN, is accomplished. She's a wife, mother, nurse, educator and possibly precedent-setting researcher.

On top of all that, she's fun to talk to. She's fun in the way that her passion about things is infectious, even through a long-distance telephone chat.

It's been 30 years since she started her nursing career, a choice she never once regretted. Along the way, she's been a staff nurse in hospitals and community health settings, as well as supervisor and nurse practitioner. Most recently devoted to research, Byrne said her greatest passion is helping patients.

"I am trying to make a difference for people who have healthcare problems," she told ADVANCE. "In our society, everyone is underserved in one way or another, in terms of healthcare."

Happy & Humble

Months after receiving the Audrey Hepburn Award for Contributions to the Health and Welfare of Children in November 2007, Byrne was still flying high. The award, presented by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International, "is a highlight of my career," she said.

A member of the honor society since 1968, she accepted the award with great enthusiasm and enormous humility.

"It was important to me because in making the presentation, they likened my values and my passion for caring for children to that of Audrey Hepburn," Byrne said. "I thought it was such a wonderful tribute."

Her husband Thomas was with her at the honor society's biennial convention in Baltimore, MD, and presented her with the award.

"Mary's passion has been her life's work - the health promotion of children and the relationship between children and parents," said Carol Picard, PhD, RN-CS, past-president for the honor society.

Helping the Vulnerable

Byrne is the Stone-Fish Professor for Clinical Health Care of the Underserved at Columbia University in New York, NY. Funded consistently by the NIH and other organizations, her work has focused on improving the lives of vulnerable populations, including HIV seroreverter infants (HIV-negative babies born to HIV-positive women), children raised in prison, children receiving primary care in low-income neighborhoods and seriously ill children.

Byrne participates generously in interdisciplinary work groups, is lauded as a doctoral student adviser and recognized as a mentor, both nationally and internationally.

Widely considered an expert on implementing prison nurseries, she is the first nurse to assess maternal-infant attachments, parent-child interactions, parenting competency and child development over a time in a sample drawn from prisons. Several prison systems have even contacted her to discuss implementation of prison nurseries.

Babies in Prison

"Do babies belong in prison?" It's a question Byrne is striving hard to answer. So far, the answer seems to be yes, under the right conditions.

When she spoke to ADVANCE, Byrne was near the end of her prison research - where she followed children for 1 year - and was waiting word on a grant to extend the project.

With very little prompting, Byrne can recall almost every single woman and child who participated in the study. "I think about them often," she said. "All of them made a tremendous impression on me."

Her years of research, according to a feature on her in Columbia's newsletter, began almost by accident. Byrne went to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in New York - one of only a few women's prisons in the U.S. that allow pregnant prisoners to keep a newborn with them for the first 12-18 months of the baby's life - as a liaison for the School of Nursing's master's degree students. The students were providing clinical care at the prison.

"I took a look around and noticed the nursery," Byrne said. "As a pediatric nurse practitioner interested in mother-infant attachment, I knew I wanted to research this."

By late 2000, according to the newsletter piece by Susan Conova, Byrne started a small study, with support from the Columbia University Institute for Child and Family Policy and the New York State Department of Health. In 2003, she began a much larger and ambitious project - tracking 100 prison nursery babies from birth, throughout their stay in the nursery and through their first year outside of prison.

"The babies in the prison nursery program are developmentally the same as other babies," Byrne said. "To answer the real question, 'Do the babies belong in the prison with their mothers?' the answer, so far, seems to be yes."

Success Stories

Byrne found separating mother and baby might be much more detrimental to the child's overall health. "If the baby isn't care for by its mother, who else can function as the primary caregiver? Sometimes the baby is passed around, and nobody develops a strong attachment to the child."

In her study, Byrne noted: The prison nurseries appear not only to benefit the children, but also the mothers. None of the mothers in Byrne's study have committed any new crimes and only 5 percent have violated parole and returned to prison.

"Being a mother is a journey, an adventure, and it's never any easy one," she said. "I don't think about these women any differently, as a practitioner. To me, they are mothers who were in a particular set of circumstances.

"We have had many success stories," she said.

She likes to think her outreach has had something to do with that. Byrne said she enjoys hearing from the mothers and receiving photos of the children. She's gotten numerous "thank-you" notes. She's also sent birthday cards and Mother's Day cards to the mothers.

"Many women say it's the first time they had ever received a birthday card," Byrne said. n

Rose Quinn is a frequent contributor to ADVANCE.