PCH: Faculty

Noel J. Chrisman, PhD Professor Psychosocial & Community Health Box 357362 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-7263 Email Address: noelj@u.washington.edu

I am an anthropologist who specializes in applied, medical, and urban anthropology. I consider myself to be a clinically applied anthropologist focusing on cross cultural nursing and cultural competence training. In addition, as a public health practitioner, I have a major interest in community organization. My research until the late 1990s was on the cultural meanings of illness and the social nature of illness episodes. For the last 15 to 20 years, I've been doing Community-Based Participatory Research with members of ethnic communities, both rural and urban. After completing Participatory Action Research on the Yakama Reservation in 1996, I joined the evaluation team for Seattle Partners for Healthy Communities, a community project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Beginning in 1999, I began working with another CDC project, REACH 2010 that carries out a secondary prevention intervention for people with diabetes. We work with African Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Latinos. My interest in these projects is developing evaluation approaches that retain the fluidity needed in cross cultural community work, but adhere to accepted scientific standards. I joined the faculty of the School of Nursing in July, 1973. During the next year, I worked with colleagues to develop and then teach the innovative Graduate Program in Cross Cultural Nursing, the first in the country. The Cross Cultural Nursing program is now part of Advanced Practice Community Health Systems Nursing. Since 1989, I have been part of the team that directs Advanced Practice Community Health Systems Nursing. During that period we have seen many changes in community health and public health practice. We are excited about our approach to community health in which we work on capacity building and community empowerment to support health promotion and disease prevention activities by community members. As part of this program, my graduate and undergraduate students and I have been working in a small Latino Neighborhood in South Seattle called South Park (http://www.son.washington.edu/centers/south-park/). I have been an officer in the Society for Medical Anthropology and the Council on Nursing and Anthropology. Between 2001 and 2004 I was President-Elect, President, and Past-President for the Society for Applied Anthropology. For the past few years, I have chaired the American Anthropological Association/Society for Applied Anthropology Commission on Applied and Practicing Anthropology. This specially constituted group of anthropological leaders has been improving training and employment opportunities for applied anthropologists at all levels of expertise.

Community of Science Profile

Links

Society for Applied Anthropology UW Medical Anthropology Society for Medical Anthropology DiversityRX Transcultural Nursing Society Community Campus Partnerships for Health

Current Projects

• Maternal & Child Health Long Term Training (Mentor)