Wendy A. Henderson has been appointed the Gail and Ralph Reynolds President’s Distinguished Professor at Penn and will serve as a faculty member in Penn Nursing’s department of biobehavioral health sciences. She joins Penn Nursing from the University of Connecticut, where she held a joint appointment as a professor in the School of Nursing and the School of Medicine. Dr. Henderson most recently served as director of the PhD program at UConn’s School of Nursing and, before that, was director of the school’s Center for Nursing Scholarship and Innovation. Dr. Henderson was previously a clinical investigator and lab chief of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)’s Digestive Disorders Unit in the division of intramural research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.

Dr. Henderson earned both her BSN (1994) and her MSN (1999) from the University of Pittsburgh, where she also completed a patient safety fellowship through the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. In 1999, Dr. Henderson became a certified registered nurse practitioner, though her subspecialty is in pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition. In 2007, Dr. Henderson obtained her PhD in nursing from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was also a clinical and translational science institute fellow. That same year, she joined the NINR as a postdoctoral researcher and staff scientist, conducting research on the immuno-genetic mechanisms involved in symptom distress related to digestive and liver diseases.

Dr. Henderson was appointed as an assistant clinical investigator at the NINR in 2009 and then joined the NINR tenure-track faculty in the NIH Division of Intramural Research in 2011. She served for ten years as a clinical investigator and lab chief at NINR. Her interest in symptomatology in patients with gastrointestinal and liver disorders stems from her clinical and research experience at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s pediatric gastroenterology department, where she served as a faculty member and nurse practitioner. There, she was a member of the Women Scientist Advisors Committee and the Intramural Program of Research on Women’s Health Steering Committee. She also served as NINR’s NIH liaison for the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act and as a pediatric gastrointestinal clinical consultant at the NIH Clinical Center.  

As a primary investigator on multiple studies at the NIH, Dr. Henderson researched the brain-gut-liver microbiota axis and chronic effects of stress on intestinal health. She co-developed the gastrointestinal pain pointer technology to provide clinicians with a more integrated tool for GI symptom assessment—one that includes location, intensity, quality, and physiologic parameters. Through a brain-gut natural history study, Dr. Henderson’s team also assessed brain-gut-liver interactions in normal-weight and overweight patients with chronic abdominal pain of unknown origin.  

Dr. Henderson co-invented multiple patents involved in nucleic acid detection and signatures of genetic control in digestive and liver disorders. One recent patented methodology tests stool rapidly at the point-of-need for infectious pathogens, which won the American Gastroenterological Association Tech Summit’s Shark Tank competition. She also invented a computerized face-scale assessment known as the Show-n-Tell, which quantifies the degree of pain symptoms in children.  

Dr. Henderson has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications and her research and that of her mentees has been funded by many national and international organizations. She has received many honors throughout her career, including the 2019 Founders Award from the International Society of Nurses in Genetics; the 2018 American Gastroenterological Association Future Leader award; and the NINR’s Director Awards for Diversity (2019), Leadership (2014); and Innovation (2010).