Kathleen Knafl, PhD, FAAN

Professor

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Nursing
Carrington Hall, CB #7460
Office: 408
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7460

Kathleen (Kathy) Knafl is a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a sociologist who has spent her entire academic career in nursing with prior faculty appointments at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Yale, University, and Oregon Health Sciences University. Throughout her 50 year career Dr. Knafl has been committed to advancing family health and understanding family response to health-related challenges. As an advocate for and expert in family research her scholarship has encompassed substantive, theoretical and methodological contributions. In collaboration with colleagues Janet Deatrick and Agatha Gallo, she led the development of the Family Management Style Framework, including development of a structured measure of family management (Family Management Measure – FaMM). Both the framework and measure have been used by investigators in multiple countries and the FaMM has been translated into 10 languages. Further information on the development, testing, and scoring of the FaMM can be found at https://nursing.unc.edu/research/support/family-mgmt-measure.

Much of Dr. Knafl’s research has involved mixed-methods designs and she has contributed to the development of analytic strategies aimed at treating the family/dyad as the unit of analysis. In addition to leading NIH funded studies of family management of childhood chronic conditions, Dr. Knafl was principal investigator for a synthesis of research on the intersection of family life and childhood chronic conditions. Dr. Knafl has served as a co-investigator and consultant on multiple NIH and privately funded grants, most often providing guidance of data collection and analysis in family research. She was a founding member of the International Family Nursing Association, serving as association treasurer for six years. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Family Nursing and in 2018 she was awarded the Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Illinois at Chicago for her efforts to advance family health and research.

 

Family Management Measure (FaMM)

Learn more