Contact: media@bannerhealth.com
SUN CITY, Ariz. (Sept. 12, 2017) – Banner Sun Health Research Institute welcomes Teresa Burks, RN, FNP, as a new family nurse practitioner to its facility to expanding the care and research provides patients and families impacted by memory and movement disorders.
Burks brings 18 years of patient care, education and compassionate caretaking experience to her new role. She will focus on Banner Sun Health Research Institute’s Brain and Body Donation Program, an autopsy-based, research-devoted brain and biospecimen bank that derives its human donors from the Arizona Study of Aging and Neurodegenerative Disease.
Researchers and providers at the facility study the elderly volunteer’s function during life and their organs and tissue after death, specifically those related to Alzheimer’s disease, Dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease and cancer. The banked tissue, biomaterials and biospecimens is shared with qualified researchers worldwide.
Previously, Burkes served at the Holland Center for Family Health in Peoria, Ariz. as a family nurse practitioner. She joins the team of providers with a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Bradley University in Illinois and a Master’s degree in nursing from University of Illinois in Chicago.
Since 1986, Banner Sun Health Research Institute, part of nonprofit Banner Health, has been a leader nationally and internationally in the effort to find answers to disorders of aging including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The institute, together with its Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium partners, has been designated by the National Institutes of Health as one of just 29 Alzheimer’s Disease Centers in the nation. The institute’s Cleo Roberts Center for Clinical Research takes laboratory discoveries to clinical trials that foster hope for new treatments. Banner Health is Arizona’s leading health care provider and largest private employer. For more information, visit www.bannershri.org