Allison Barlow, PhD, MPH ’97, MA

Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, as a core part of its mission to raise the health status and autonomy of American Indian people to the highest possible level, is committed to providing national leadership in training American Indian and Alaska Native scholars in health care and public health science. With leadership from faculty members of American Indian and First Nations heritage, their public health training incorporates traditional values and cultural wisdom.

THE CENTER’S PROGRAMS REACH MORE THAN 50 TRIBAL NATIONS IN MORE THAN 15 STATES

In 2016, Allison Barlow, PhD, MPH ’97, MA, was named the new director of the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health. Barlow, who served as the center’s associate director since 2002, is taking over from Mathuram Santosham, MD, MPH ’75, who founded the center in 1991.

Barlow, an associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a leader in behavioral and mental health research, has devoted more than 25 years to addressing health disparities among American Indian populations. In partnership with Native communities, she has helped develop innovative programs to improve child, adolescent and family health and to increase opportunities for reservation-based American Indian youth. In honor of her contributions to American Indian communities, she received the 2013 U.S. Indian Health Service Director’s Special Recognition Award and the Martin Luther King Social Justice Award from Dartmouth College in 2008.