Board Members

Julie Ann St. John, DrPH, MPH, MA, CHWI, Julia Jones Matthews School of Population and Public Health, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Abilene, TX, USA Julie St. John is an Associate Professor in the Julia Jones Matthews School of Population and Public Health, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC), Abilene campus. She has her doctorate in public health from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health. Her research interests include: health status and quality of life improvement among diverse and rural populations through community health development and partnership approaches; health equity and disparities; scope of practice and training of Community Health Workers; addressing human trafficking through community capacity building; and equipping future public health professionals through teaching, service, research, and practice. Dr. St. John has served as the principal and co-investigator on numerous projects in rural and underserved areas that utilized community based participatory research approaches. She is currently a co-investigator on a Texas DSHS Health Equity grant in Deaf Smith, Parmer, and Gray Counties and a co-investigator on an NIH maternal health grant in the Texas Panhandle regions. Dr. St. John completed a fellowship with the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) “Rural Health Fellows Program” and a Rural Scholar fellowship with The F. Marie Hall Institute for Rural and Community Health, TTUHSC. She also teaches several undergraduate and graduate courses and works internationally on various public health initiatives. She has been a Texas certified Community Health Worker Instructor since 2009, served on the Texas CHW Advisory Committee from 2011-2020, served on the Board of Directors for the Texas Association of Promotores and Community Health Workers (TAPCHW) from 2017-2022, co-chairs the TAPCHW training center, a member of the APHA CHW Section, and has worked with CHWs for more than twenty years. She has served in a number of roles within the APHA CHW section, including: secretary, Chair and Co-chair of the Awards Committee, section councilor (two separate terms), treasurer, and co-chair of the nominating committee. Her research interests include engaging CHWs in community based participatory research and community health development approaches, and she has served as the principal and co-investigator on numerous projects. She founded the National CHW Training Center at Texas A&M School of Public Health in 2013. She serves on the CHW Core Consensus Project (C3) project as a co-investigator. She has also developed over 500 hours of CHW and CHW instructor continuing education trainings. Along with co-editors Wandy Hernandez-Gordon and Susan Mayfield Johnson, she published a CHW textbook with 20 teams comprised of 140 authors titled, “Promoting the Health of the Community – Community Health Workers Describing their Roles, Competencies, and Practice,” with Springer in April 2021. Additionally, she teaches several undergraduate and graduate level public health courses and completed two fellowships related to rural health and policy. She served as a fellow with the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) “Rural Health Fellows Program” where she co-authored a CHW policy paper entitled, “Community Health Workers: Recommendations for bridging healthcare gaps in rural communities” in 2017 and was a Rural Scholar with The F. Marie Hall Institute for Rural and Community Health, TTUHSC, in 2020. She is a long-time CHW ally and advocate and believes in the difference CHW make and their critical role in improving population health status and quality of life.