Adey M. Nyamathi

Adeline M. Nyamathi’s is a prolific researcher dedicated to improving health outcomes and reducing health inequities domestically and abroad. Dr. Nyamathi serves as a Distinguished Professor and Founding Dean Emeritus of the University of California Irvine (UCI), Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. As Founding Dean, her focus on building the research enterprise led to quadrupling research funding over her term, improving the nursing school’s National Institute of Health (NIH) ranking by 20 points, closely approaching the top 20 ranking. Prior to joining UCI, she served in various leadership positions at the University of California Los Angeles. She has led teams to develop effective and state-of-the-art interventions using community-based participatory research methods to address significant health disparities with people living with or at risk for HIV/AIDS, TB, and hepatitis.

Dr. Nyamathi promoted the establishment of partnerships between community health workers and research nurses to deliver health promotion programs in the streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles, CA, protecting the health of their participants from active TB, hepatitis A and B, or worsening sequelae of HCV. Her findings have influenced drug treatment programs and clinic hiring practices. Her research has led to an enhanced acceptance of vaccines, significant reduction of drug use and re-incarceration at one-year follow-up, and an increase in protective behaviors in the targeted populations.

Dr. Nyamathi led a multi-disciplinary team, hiring and training nurse-led Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) of village women in India, to co-educate and support women living in the community with HIV/AIDS. Her findings demonstrated the importance of peer support, and nutrition education and supplementation in improving CD4 (T cells) counts, anthropometric parameters and immune status among mothers and their children. After her team’s successful outcomes were presented to local medical research institutes and Indian Government officials, discussions followed about the need to financially support the nutrition of people living with HIV/AIDS. As a result, financial support is being provided to people living with HIV/AIDS in many states in India. Furthermore, Dr. Nyamathi’s research in India is shedding light on the need for cervical cancer screening among area women living with HIV/AIDS, which is leading to her next R01 research project grant with the National Cancer Institute. For over three decades, she has received continuous funding of over $40 million from NIH as Principal Investigator across six NIH institutes. She has authored/co-authored over 260 peer reviewed publications.

Dr. Nyamathi was inducted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Nursing in 1992. Dr. Nyamathi earned her BSN at Hunter College Bellevue School of Nursing, an MSN from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and a PhD from Case Western Reserve University. Awards and recognitions include the Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, first nurse elected as Vice Chairperson of the Specialty Committee of Nursing of the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies, and Visiting Professor, Hunan Provincial Tumour Hospital and Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University. Additionally, she was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame and received the Outstanding Community Researcher Award from UCI’s Institute for Clinical & Translational Science.