Director and Professor, Center for American Indian and Rural Health EquityCenter for American Indian and Rural Health Equity
I am currently the Director of the Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity (CAIRHE) at Montana State University, a center dedicated to community-based partnerships to improve health equity in rural and American Indian communities. I was also the founding director of the Collaborative Center for Health Equity (CCHE) at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The foundation for all of my leadership and research has been community-based participatory research working in partnership with communities to understand and solve health challenges using both scientific rigor and crucial community knowledge. I have directed multiple clinical trials, including the Healthy Children, Strong Families2 trial in five Native communities nationally, have over 60 per-reviewed publications, and have received over $35 million in National Institutes of Health funding. I have worked in research partnerships with many cultures and American Indian communities in the United States, and recently with Indigenous communities in Hawaii and New Zealand. My blending of medical, research, and Indigenous knowledge and having to bridge these divergent worlds has taught me the critical importance of culture, language, and spiritual revitalization in healing Indigenous families and communities suffering from historic and current trauma.
As a center director, I mentor many inter-disciplinary junior faculty researchers and we have a number of research products from our community partnered work that we are working to disseminate to other communities. I am eager to learn from and contribute to the international dialog in promotion of health equity. I am also eager to be in the company of others working to create a more just world in which diversity of opinion and the importance of an Indigenous holistic worldview in which all things are interconnected is understood.