sriAHEC: Staff

Our Staff:

Director

Delores M. Walters has been the Director of the Southern Rhode Island Area Health Education Center (sriAHEC) since March, 2010. Previously, she was Director of Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives at the National Council for Research on Women in New York City; and taught in the Year Up workforce prep program in Providence. Delores earned a doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from New York University, and a B.S. in Nursing from Columbia University. She spent ten years in public health and hospital nursing.

Health-Care Disparities in Global Perspective
She conducted her dissertation field research among an African-identified group in Yemen, which resulted in a film and a number of articles on women’s roles in promoting health-care and social inclusion in a Yemeni community. The video, “Murshidat: Female Primary health-care Workers Transforming Society in Yemen” (1999, Arabic, English voice-over, 35 min.) is available from Penn State Media Salesand on under sriAHEC resources.

Culturally Competent Health-Care
While teaching and directing the ALANA (African, Latin, Asian, Native American) Cultural Center at Colgate University (1997-2002), a class taught by Dr. Walters created a website which for ten years provided cultural diversity guidelines used by medical, nursing and support staff at a medical center located in a high refugee resettlement area of upstate New York.

Arts & Education
Dr. Walters also directs a project that highlights the cultural/historical legacies of African Americans and other people of color in the Ocean State. The project, funded by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, with additional support from Providence Innercity Arts, aims to motivate participating youth especially to complete their education. Workshops conducted by the storytellers and presenters engage participants in the art of collecting, and sharing their stories in local and global communities through multimedia and artistic presentations. A You Tube video containing excerpts of the stories we have collected to date can be found at Rhode 2 Africa Blog

Heritage & Health
In addition, Dr. Walters has served as a consultant on the Margaret Garner opera, a courageous and tragic story which was the inspiration for Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, and her libretto for the opera. She discovered the story of Margaret Garner while teaching and developing a national family/local history training program at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University. Margaret Garner Playbill

Ultimately through her leadership of sriAHEC initiatives, Walters intends to advance cultural competence, inclusion and knowledge of the cultural/historical legacies of historically underrepresented groups in the United States among present and future health-care practitioners.

Administrative Assistant

Donna David provided outstanding service as Senior Word Processing Typist from July through October 2010 when lack of funds for the current fiscal year (2010) necessitated that she find another position at the University. Donna has been an administrative staff member at URI since 1999. Previously she was assistant to the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English and office manager in that department for the American Transcendental Quarterly (ATQ) journal until the end of publication in December 2008. She is now working in the Controller’s Office. We thank Donna for her short, but crucial contribution in helping to set up essential operations in the sriAHEC office.