Dr. Leigh Ann Simmons joined the Duke University School of Nursing in August 2012, and will be teaching health policy courses within the DNP program. She is also a Senior Research Fellow in the Duke Center for Research on Prospective Health Care and a Senior Faculty Fellow for Clinical and Translational Research at Duke Integrative Medicine. She earned a PhD in child and family development from the University of Georgia, a master's degree in couple and family therapy from MCP-Hahnemann University (now Drexel University), and a BA in literature/writing from the University of California at San Diego.
Dr. Simmons comes to DUSON from the Division of General Internal Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine. Prior to arriving at Duke, she held an appointment as an assistant professor of Family Studies and Health Services Management at the University of Kentucky. She served as a Congressional Fellow for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in 2003.
Dr. Simmons was designated a Health Disparities Scholar through the Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities from 2005-2010. A former Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health scholar, she has published and presented nationally and internationally in the areas of health care policy, women’s health disparities, peripartum health behaviors and decision-making, and personalized health care. Dr. Simmons’ current research focuses on reducing women’s health disparities in obesity and depression through the design and evaluation of personalized approaches to health care in underserved populations and combining quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to shape new, integrated models of health and social welfare policy.
