Kendra Kamp had a front-row seat to many medical appointments for her husband, as he recovered from an ulcerative colitis diagnosis, commonly referred to as “UC.”
UC is an inflammatory bowel disease that can lead to long-lasting inflammation and ulcers. As her boyfriend-turned-husband recovered from removal of his entire large intestine, Kamp, a nursing PhD student, noticed there were gaps in the care he was receiving from one of the nation’s top health centers.
“So, I thought, as nurses, we must be able to do this better,” Kamp said. When I turned to the literature, most of what was known was related to medications — and medications are absolutely important — but what was lacking was a holistic view of the patient.”
This sent Kamp on a quest to determine how UC and Crohn’s Disease patients can better manage their condition, and which types of support can foster resilience. One PhD degree from the Michigan State University College of Nursing later — and a few years in academia — and Kamp is now director of the Gastrointestinal (GI) Health and Wellness Lab at the University of Washington, where she looks into UC, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other GI issues.
“Our goal is optimal gut health for all,” Kamp said, adding upwards of 15% of Americans have IBS. “Our primary study is on comprehensive self-management. But we also train nurse researchers and others on how to conduct research focused on the gastrointestinal tract. And we also aim to educate the community about GI health, and things like that.”
Some tips for managing GI issues can include engaging in deep, abdominal breathing, Kamp said, noting the brain is connected to the gut and that is important for both to be in constant “communication” with one another.
“There's so much that we don't know about how our brain and our gut are connected,” said Kamp, who ventured westward after seeing the University of Washington was one of the few universities with nursing faculty focused on GI issues.
Thankfully, as Kamp explores unchartered terrain, she has a husband she can bounce ideas off who will likely benefit from her findings.
“it's been fun because I can, in some instances ‘co-design’ some ideas with him. I can ask him, what do you think of this? Where are the gaps? What don't we know? So, he's really involved in a lot of the brainstorming that I do and thinking about what are the needs that the traditional health care system might be missing that's important to patients?”
In addition to ongoing UC research, the 2018 MSU graduate said she is currently focused on women’s health, specifically the menstrual cycle’s role in GI issues, including bloating and abdominal pain. Kamp currently has a grant request out to the National Institutes of Health to explore the connection between IBD symptoms and menstrual cycles.
“What we're interested in understanding is how does that relate to hormone levels and how does that relate to inflammation?” Kamp said. “So, for people who have these inflammatory conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, how are all of these things connecting together?”
Kamp also is exploring the connection between IBD and menopause. She says prior research on the latter has mostly focused on hot flashes, as well as sleep and mood issues.
“We actually don't know very much about gastrointestinal symptoms, abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, things like that,” she said. “And, so, in our literature review, one of the things that we found is that women with inflammatory bowel disease have an earlier age of menopause compared to healthy controls.”
Kamp credits her time at MSU for setting her up to succeed in her current role in Seattle.
“I think I learned so much when I was there, and I miss all the opportunities that I had,” Kamp said. “There were so many different things to learn and so many people who were willing to teach me. Dr. Barbara Given was my advisor. She helped guide me from my initial stages all the way through my dissertation. I am also extremely grateful to Dr. Gwen Wyatt, who provided me with different opportunities for learning about randomized control trials.”
As a PhD student, Kamp said she was able to participate in the MSU Trifecta Initiative, which is a research partnership between the Colleges of Communication Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Nursing.
She admits her PhD program was not easy, but that it was still worth it. The key to making it through a nursing PhD program? Persistence.
“I think it's having that persistence to overcome those hurdles because you're going to experience those hurdles in your career as well, right?” Kamp said. “I have multiple manuscripts that have been rejected multiple times and grants that haven’t been funded, but you often don't see that; you just see the successful manuscripts and the successful grants. But there's this underlying persistence that you need to have to be able to continue on, even when things get hard.”
