Dr. Stewart is an
Associate Professor in the Department of Health
Policy and Management in the UAMS COPH as well
as the
Director of the COPH Office of
Community-Based Public Health (OCBPH). She
received her MD at UAMS and completed her
Preventive Medicine residency and MPH degree at
the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of
Public Health. Her current areas of focus
include applying and teaching community-based
participatory approaches to research and program
efforts, and interventions to address racial and
ethnic health disparities. She brings to her
work as a community-based participatory
researcher, a valuable combination of expertise
in health policy; program design and evaluation;
and survey research. Much of her experience has
been gained working with communities in the
Mississippi River Delta region and Bangladesh,
but also in assisting with national surveys in
Namibia, the Philippines, and Ethiopia. Dr.
Stewart teaches doctoral courses on
Community-Based Program Design and Evaluation
for the college, is a co-founder of the UAMS
Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Taskforce,
and oversees a Kellogg funded initiative to
eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities
through institutional partnerships with
communities. She has over 19 years experience in
public health, program development, and health
services research, with more than 5 years
experience in community-based participatory
research. She served as the director of the
Arkansas Southern Rural Access Program, an 8
year initiative funded by the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation to improve rural access to
primary health care. Her research has included
evaluations of Medicaid-funded waivers and
programs; studies of service utilization and
access to care for family planning, and home and
community-based services; and research on the
process of community participation in research.
She recently co-organized a photography exhibit
at the COPH on the war in Iraq to educate the
public about the public health impact of war.