After serving as an assistant professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio School of Nursing, Dr. Allison Ihle is returning to UT Austin, where she completed her post-doctoral fellowship program.
Between that time, Ihle has kept busy. She was recognized as one of the Texas Nurses Association Outstanding 25 Nurses in Texas in 2025 and received the UT San Antonio Presidential Junior Research Scholar Award (2026) for outstanding early-career research contributions.
Ihle just wrapped up her supplement award from a national R01 grant that dealt with contexts that may influence health outcomes and needs of childbearing women and their children on probation.
The original grant had been awarded to Dr. Rebecca Shlafer of the University of Minnesota, a renowned scholar who focuses on enhanced perinatal programs for incarcerated women across eight different states. Ihle began collaborating with Shlafer as a PhD student in 2019 and later applied for the NIH supplement in 2023.
“I took similar aims and research questions to hers and applied them to populations here in Texas,” Ihle said. “I also focused on women who are under community supervision (probation). What people don’t realize is that most women of reproductive age who are pregnant, birthing and/or parenting are prioritized for probation. While probation is less restrictive than being incarcerated in a prison system, it comes with a lot of social and economic barriers.”
Ihle, PhD, RN, FAAN, said there are requirements for people on probation, such as paying restitution, which can cost several hundred dollars a month. In Texas, probationers are required to get a job within a month of getting out of incarceration.
“That might be hard when you consider someone who might be pregnant or postpartum, or someone who may have young children,” she said.
Most of the offenses in the group that Ihle studied were related to poverty, including petty theft, prostitution and substance use. Often, the women were sent back to prison after technical violations such as not being able to find a job. It can end up being a vicious cycle, Ihle said.
“I essentially just wanted to see what the needs and perinatal outcomes are of women on community supervision,” Ihle said. “Out of the 1.2 million women who are in the criminal legal system, 808,000 are put on probation, and despite that large number, we don’t have good data on their pregnancies or perinatal outcomes.”
Over the course of two years, Ihle sampled 60 women and 13 officers to see what the needs and outcomes were for this population. She examined health care, mental health, adverse childhood experiences, violence during pregnancy and sexual health behaviors.
Ihle is in the process of applying for a new R01 grant that would follow the women surveyed six months after giving birth into the post-partum period.
The new grant isn’t all that Ihle is working on.
“We have an AI mobile app, using an AI chatbot that we have trained to give time-sensitive feedback to women who are hard to reach,” Ihle said. “They are usually transient in the criminal legal system and the app will help them with decision-making and self-management.”
Ihle said the School of Nursing’s strengths in digital health and technology, including work led by Dean Kavita Radhakrishnan, made UT an especially strong fit for her research.
“I thought that being in that department, dealing with underserved populations, would be a really good fit for my research,” Ihle said. “The School of Nursing’s Center for Applied Data Science focuses on using technologies such as AI and large data sets to help with preventive efforts. The resources available through both the School of Nursing and the broader university could help me further launch, strengthen and sustain my research.”