Dr. Donna Hallas received a Diploma in nursing from St. Mary's Hospital School of Nursing in Waterbury, CT, a BS in nursing from Adelphi University, a Master's degree from State University of New York at Stony Brook, and a PhD from Adelphi University, NY.

Dr. Hallas is a certified pediatric nurse practitioner, a certified pediatric mental health specialist, and is a Clinical Professor & Director of the Pediatrics NP Program at New York University Meyers College of Nursing. Her faculty practice and expertise are in management of vulnerable pediatric/adolescent populations.

Her research has been presented nationally and internationally focusing on improving health care outcomes for young children. She was the PI for a Vaccine Hesitancy  Randomized Controlled Trial for Prenatal women and Mothers of newborns to determine the effectiveness of web-based behavioral interventions to reduce vaccine hesitancy using the principles of informed decision-making and shared decision-making.

She was the PI for a 3-year funded HRSA grant to create an Innovative Academic Clinical Partnership for Preceptor Development to enable NP students to be practice-ready upon graduation. Modules for NP preceptors were developed and are available for free at https://pdp.nursing.nyu.edu/ 

Dr. Hallas conducts both qualitative and quantitative research studies and has published the outcomes of a RCT on oral health interventions in an educational program for mothers of newborns and a RCT examining the social-emotional development of toddlers. Her qualitative work is in the area of phenomenology, and she has presented at the International Conference for Qualitative Research in the Netherlands and in Canada. 

Dr. Hallas is the author for the PNP corner in the journal, Contemporary Pediatrics. She also published a monthly column entitled, Pediatric and Maternal Pulse, in the journal of the Nurse practitioners in women's health entitled: Women's Healthcare: A Clinical Journal for NPs. She is also a section editor for the Journal of Pediatric Healthcare for the Research Methods section. 

During this COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Hallas has published widely on Safe Return to School and has been involved with numerous media presentations on this topic and child and family safety throughout this pandemic.