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Yuko Homma is an alumni of the University of British Columbia, with a PhD in nursing in 2012, and currently an associate professor of nursing at Mukogawa Women’s University in Japan. She first worked as a midwife in Osaka, and then as a faculty member of nursing and midwifery at Ehime College of Bio-Medial Technology and later at Osaka Prefecture College of Nursing. During her career in Japan, she became interested in adolescent nursing and decided to earn a master’s degree in the United States because she waned to make her life an adventure. Yuko received a Master of Science in nursing from the University of Minnesota, where she met a lifelong mentor, Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc. She also had valuable experiences in Minnesota such as spending dangerously cold winter and being an ethnic minority. The experience as a minority stimulated her interest in adolescent health among ethnic minorities, which led to her dissertation on factors associated with sexual behaviour among East Asian adolescents in Canada. As a member of the Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre (SARAVYC), she has been involved in various research projects on sexual minority youth. After completion of the postdoctoral fellowship at the SARAVYC, she returned to Japan in 2015 to be faculty of a new School of Nursing at one of the largest women’s university with a history of 80 years. Yuko and her colleagues celebrated the achievements of the first graduates from the BSN program in March 2019. |  |