Janine M. Jurkowski

Janine M. Jurkowski

Professor, Department Chair
School of Public Health
Department of Health Policy, Management and Behavior
Education

Post-Doctoral Fellow National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, University of Illinois at Chicago 2004
Ph.D. University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, Community Health Sciences 2003
M.P.H. Boston University School of Public Health Epidemiology and Health Promotion 1998
B.A. University of Rochester Health and Nutrition 1995

Janine M. Jurkowski
About

Janine M. Jurkowski is a professor in social, behavior and community health. She is passionate about improving health inequities and the diversity of the public health workforce. She works to incorporate anti-racist and participatory action research values into her teaching and research. Her research and administrative work promotes mutually beneficial community engagement initiatives between academia and community organizations, government agencies and individuals who historically do not have a voice in factors that affect their lives. In her research, she employs a community-based participatory research approach (CBPR) and studies the integration of Empowerment Theory in intervention research with low income families. As a teacher, she aims to give her students real-world experiences as they develop knowledge and skills in community health and health inequities.

Dr. Jurkowski has experience as a Provost Fellow for Publicly Engaged Research and Teaching with the goal to change the university culture to accept and support community-engaged and transdisciplinary research and teaching. During this fellowship, she worked to incorporate publicly-engaged language into the tenure and promotion guidelines at the university level. She presented the importance of publicly-engaged research and teaching to university partners, vice presidents, and deans. Currently, she is working a tool kit to provide publicly-engaged faculty with strategies for developing a trajectory and ultimately a dossier that includes publicly engaged scholarship.

 

Research Interests

Dr. Jurkowski conducts research on social determinants of health disparities using a Community-Based Participatory Research Approach among women and their families, specifically focusing on low-income and disadvantaged women. Historically, Dr. Jurkowski has also worked with Latinos and people with disabilities. She conducts intervention research with a focus on family-centered childhood obesity prevention in Head Start. She has expertise in cross cultural survey methods and qualitative methods including focus group and Photovoice methodology. Dr. Jurkowski has worked with community partners in the Amsterdam Latino community, Chicago, and Troy, New York. She is currently working with nonprofits and community representatives in the Capital Region of NY and Boston, MA. She has also worked on a food pantry intervention evaluation project for the Schenectady Public Health Service, which was funded by the CDC. Dr. Jurkowski continues to partner with low-income communities in her research.