Center for American Indian Health Seminar
Advancing the science of systems and policy interventions for health in Native Nations
Indigenous Scholar Dr. Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan
Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research and Policy
Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences
Tribal affiliation: Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
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Dr. Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan
Dr. Jernigan is an Indigenous (Choctaw) community-based participatory researcher. Her work focuses on intervention science that combines research with action for social change. She received her doctorate in public health from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular disease prevention at Stanford University, where she also completed a degree in documentary filmmaking. She has been the Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on 10 NIH-funded trials focused on food systems and health, including the THRIVE study, the first randomized trial of healthy makeovers in tribally owned convenience stores, and the FRESH study, a farm-to-school intervention to reduce obesity in Native families. She directs the Center for Indigenous Health Research and Policy at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences where she is a Professor of Medicine. In all her work she has fostered long-term mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous communities that support tribal sovereignty and build the capacity of Indigenous communities to improve health.