Karina L. Walters, MSW/PhD | Speaker, 2023 Graduate and Professional Studies Commencement
Dr. Walters is a renowned scholar and professor who will soon become the Director of the Tribal Health Research Office at the National Institutes of Health.
Karina L. Walters, PhD, will deliver the address at the 2023 Graduate and Professional Studies Commencement ceremony at Saint Mary’s College on May 21. Dr. Walters possesses expertise in behavioral and multi-level health interventions in culture, traumatic stress and health, historical and intergenerational trauma.
She is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is a Katherine Hall Chambers University Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, an adjunct Professor in the Department of Global Health, School of Public Health, and Co-Director of the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute (IWRI) at the University of Washington.
In late April of 2023 she will transition to be the Director of the Tribal Health Research Office at the National Institutes of Health. She is world renowned for her expertise in developing behavioral and multi-level health interventions steeped in culture to activate health-promoting behaviors.
Dr. Walters has written landmark papers on traumatic stress and health, historical and intergenerational trauma, and originated the "Indigenist" Stress-Coping model. She has led 22 NIH-funded studies.
She is one of the leading American Indian scientists in the country and is only one of two American Indians (and the only Native woman) ever invited to deliver the prestigious Director’s lecture to the Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series (WALS) at the NIH and is the first American Indian Fellow inductee into the American Academy of Social Welfare and Social Work (AASWSW).
Dr. Walters’s daughter, Amaya Simoni-Walters, is a member of the Saint Mary’s Class of ’26 and is a women’s soccer student-athlete.