Patricia M. Schoon, DNP, MPH, RN, PHN, is a tenured Associate Professor at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is a founding member of the Henry Street Consortium in 2001 and has taught nursing and public health for almost 50 years. She was the first geriatric nurse practitioner in the United States, in 1972. Schoon received the Minnesota Nurses Association Nurse Educator Award in 2005 for her work on Nurses' Day on the Hill and an online political advocacy toolkit. She has served as an appointed and elected officer of the American Nurses Association and the Minnesota Nurses Association. She received the Association of Community Nurse Educators 2016 Outstanding Contributions to Community/Public Health Nursing Education Award and the March of Dimes 2017 Minnesota Nurse of the Year Education and Research Award. Schoon recently helped develop and was President of the Omega Sigma chapter. She has also been President of Chi at-Large chapter and faculty advisor for the Zeta chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing (Sigma). She has developed innovative programs in the community, including a foot-care clinic for the homeless, and a faith-based program for older adults, and collaborative community engagement projects with multiple community partners. She has coauthored articles on the Henry Street Consortium, the development of a foot-care clinic in a homeless shelter, and partnership engagement, an outcome of a Robert Wood Johnson Grant to develop best practices in academic-practice collaboration. In 2022 she coauthored an article on a new holistic health determinants model for public health nursing practice and education.