Faculty Profile
Barbara Burns McGrath, RN, PhD
Barbara Burns McGrath is a nurse and medical anthropologist on the research faculty of the School of Nursing with adjunct appointments in the Departments of Anthropology, Women Studies, Epidemiology and serves on the faculty in the IPHG. She is also director of the Gender Disparities Core of the Center for Women's Health and Gender Research.
Research experience is centered on the description of cultural variation in response to illness, examination of the role of science and technology in the health of populations, and the application of ethnography and community based participatory research methods in health research. Recent research includes the development of an HIV prevention, health promotion intervention for Pacific Islander adolescents, and use of family history as a tool in the prevention of diabetes. She teaches two courses in the PHG curriculum. PHG 543 is a research methods course focusing on qualitative methods and survey research. PHG 521 examines the cultural and social implications of recent genetic discoveries and other emerging scientific technologies.