Beverly J. McElmurry, EdD, RN, FAAN, Professor and Associate Dean, Global Health Leadership, has served as Director of the UIC College of Nursing's World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for International Nursing Development in Primary Health Care since its designation in 1987. Dr. McElmurry served as the program director for the UIC Minority International Research Training (MIRT) Program (NIH, FIC) and directed the College's T32 Primary Health Care Research Training Program (NIH, NINR) from 1995 to 2006. Further, she has been a faculty member in the Graduate Concentration in Women's Health since the 1980's and currently serves on the campus steering committee for the UIC Center of Excellence in Women's Health. She is Co-Director for the UIC AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP) focused on Chile, Indonesia, Malawi, and China, and Director of the AmeriCorps Chicago Health Corps and VISTA programs in Chicago.
Dr. McElmurry implements PHC in urban communities through nurse-led multidisciplinary collaborative teams working with community residents and lay health advocates. This work combines her focus on women's health and development with improved health delivery systems. Recent funded demonstration projects have included evaluation of health promotion activities with organizations throughout the city to address health issues such as asthma monitoring in schools; development and dissemination of a PHC curriculum and services for inner city schools; PHC case management for outreach to new immigrants; evaluation of Latino community health worker education of adults with diabetes in Cook County Network Diabetes Clinics (funded by a DHHS Office of Minority Health Grant), evaluation of Hispanic community mobilization for development of a built environment to promote active living and healthy eating (funded by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant in conjunction with the Illinois Health Education Consortium and the Logan Square Neighborhood Association). She co-authored a book describing lessons learned from PHC projects in Chicago (McElmurry, Tyska, and Parker, 1999).
In addition to the countries listed above, she has assisted other investigators with HIV/AIDS risk reduction programs in Lithuania, Swaziland, Botswana and Thailand as well as contributing to the development of a women's health center of excellence in Thailand. She has mentored numerous international scholars through faculty advising during their doctoral studies at UIC and through short-term (3-12 month) focused study at UIC. She has numerous, well-established relationships with nurse educators and researchers through the Global Network of WHO collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery Development. Through these and other collaborative relationships, she has ties with nurse researchers in a number of countries, and has placed nursing students for international research training in many of these sites.
Dr. McElmurry has substantial experience in the development of new graduate concentrations and courses, honors college undergraduate and graduate student mentoring, and the administration of training programs. She led the development of a series of courses in PHC, including ethical issues in PHC, theoretical basis for PHC, and research methods in PHC. She co-developed the Curriculum on International Research Ethics, a four-module focused curriculum used to teach international research ethics. |
