Carolyn T. Torre RN, MA, APN, FAANP
Carolyn T. Torre is recognized for her policy work in initiating APN
statutory and regulatory law and for her work educating successive generations
of APNs. She was a primary author of the first Nurse Practitioner/Clinical
Nurse Specialist bill in the state of New Jersey. Retired as the Director of Regulatory Affairs at the New Jersey State Nurses Association, she is directly responsible
for reducing barriers to practice by successfully making over 60 NJ regulations
APN-inclusive. She has written and lectured on clinical issues ranging from
adolescence to the neurological and cognitive consequences of low birth weight, and she is a recognized nursing policy expert among educators, legislators,
governmental agencies and APNs themselves. Ms. Torre was the project director of a long-term study investigating the neurological, cognitive and psychiatric consequences of low and very low birth weight in a cohort of NJ-born children. She was co-principal investigator of a decade-long study of etiological factors related to unintended pregnancy in adolescent and young adult women. She was the first nurse practitioner at Rutgers University Health Services, and worked for a decade at Princeton University Health Services, serving as both nurse practitioner and administrative director of Sexuality, Education, Counseling and Health (SECH). She is currently a nursing policy advisor.
Her White Paper with Dr. Suzanne Drake: Maximizing Access to Health Care in NJ: The Case for Full Practice Authority (2021) provides the justification for seeking full practice authority in NJ, and the underpinning for A2286/S1522, FPA bills introduced in the NJ Legislature in February, 2022 (available at: https://apn-nj.org/). In June, 2022, Ms. Torre & Dr. Suzanne Drake wrote a point by point response to a fictional "Fact" Sheet on their White Paper, published by a consortium of NJ Medical Groups opposed to FPA; the APN Response is available at: (apn-nj.org). Her chapter, "Malpractice and the APN," was published in Lucille Joel's Advanced Practice Nursing: Essentials for Role Development, 5th Ed. (2022.) In 2019-2022, with Dr. Kim Curry, she wrote, produced and edited "Battles Hard Fought," a video history of the development and passage of New Jersey's first Nurse Practitioner/Clinical Nurse Specialist bill, utilizing the first award for nurse practitioner historical research granted by the University of Virginia Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Historical Nursing Inquiry (available at: https://www.nursing.virginia.edu/nursing-history/ and https://www.aanp.org/history). Dr. Curry and Ms. Torre were awarded a second grant from UVA in 2020, to produce, "Battles On-going," the history of Florida nurse practitioner's struggle for full practice authority, also available at (https://www.aanp.org/history).
She is the current chairperson of the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital Board of Trustees, and a member of the AANP History Committee, Felician School of Nursing Advisory Board, the Hackensack-Meridian Nurse Residency Advisory Board, and the Executive Board of Advanced Practice Nurses of NJ (APN-NJ). A retired member of the NJ State Mandated Health Benefits Advisory Commission (MHBAC), she is the primary author of the Social Impact and Medical Evidence sections of a May 2022 MHBAC report to the NJ Legislature on A2839, a bill which will limit cost sharing for insulin, and requires health insurance coverage for epinephrine auto-injectors and asthma inhalers; (available at: https://www.nj.gov/dobi/division_insurance/mhbac/a4503.pdf).
