Dr. Stewart has over 25 years of experience engaging communities, both domestically and internationally, in research, evaluation, and in interdisciplinary efforts to improve public health, particularly among rural populations with health disparities. She has developed a strong knowledge base and broad skillset for engaging communities and holds multiple leadership roles that attest to her expertise in this area. She began her career in Bangladesh, where she served on teams evaluating the population health impact of community programs as well as the critical role of socio-cultural determinants of health. She also has a solid understanding of the challenges of population-based research gained through a three year fellowship and five years of in-depth field experience overseeing national demographic and health surveys in under-resourced settings such as Namibia, Ethiopia, and the Philippines; designing survey instruments; and conducting cross-country survey data analysis. Since returning home to Arkansas in 1997, she has led programmatic and research initiatives requiring strong cross-sector partnerships at the regional, state, and community levels, with an emphasis on increasing healthcare access in rural communities and reducing health disparities related to race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. She has partnered with communities to create data and human resource infrastructure for community engaged research and program evaluation with support from NIH, the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Department of Agriculture, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as well as state-level public and philanthropic sources. She has directed the Office of Community-Based Public Health in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health (COPH) since 2001 and oversees community engagement for the Arkansas Center for Health Disparities, the Arkansas Prevention Research Center, and the UAMS Translational Research Institute. As a professor in health policy and management, she has integrated her expertise in community-based participatory research and health disparities to leverage policy changes related to access to care, community health workers, and long-term care. She also studies the science of community engagement. She has extensive experience teaching and mentoring graduate students and junior faculty in community engagement.

Director, TRI Community Engagement

Current:
2012-present Professor, Dept. Health Policy & Management, COPH, UAMS, Little Rock, AR
2005-present Director, Office of Community-Based Public Health, COPH, UAMS
2009-present Director, Community Engagement, Translational Research Institute, UAMS, Little Rock, AR
2012-present Director, Community Engagement Core, Arkansas Center for Health Disparities, COPH UAMS, Little Rock, AR
2009-present Director, Community Engagement and Partnerships Core, Arkansas Prevention Research Center, COPH UAMS, Little Rock, AR
2012-present Graduate School Faculty, Graduate School, UAMS, Little Rock, AR
Past:
2001-2012 Associate Professor (tenured in 2003), Dept. Health Policy & Management, College of Public Health (COPH), UAMS, Little Rock, AR
2003-2005 Associate Director, Office of Community-Based Public Health, COPH, UAMS
1999-2003 Associate Director, Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, UAMS, Little Rock, AR
1998-2003 Associate, Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Little Rock, AR
1988-1997 Research Associate, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
1988–1990 Acting Director, Principal Investigator (1990); Assistant Director & Co-Investigator (1988–1990) Matlab Maternal/Child Health and Family Planning Programme, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh

Courses:
2008-present: PBHL 5843/6246 Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
2010-present: PBHL 9103 Community-Based Program Design
2005-2010: PBHL 9113 Community-Based Program Design and Evaluation
2009: PBHL 9643 Advanced Methods in Health Disparities Research