SCHOLAR DIRECTORY

Kayla Carr is a PhD in Nursing student at the University of Mississippi School of Graduate Studies in Health Sciences. Her research interests include adolescent decision-making and school-based behavioral health and risk reduction interventions for rural adolescents. As an undergraduate student, Carr received a Barksdale Exploratory Research Funds award and completed research on the feasibility and community perceptions of SBHCs in rural communities as part of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors program. After practice in medical-surgical/women’s health nursing, Carr entered the community health nurse role early in her career as a registered nurse for the Mercy Delta Express Project, a mobile school-based health center (SBHC) serving children and teens in the MS Delta region. Since its founding in 2011, Mercy Delta has grown to four in-house SBHCs, and is part of a network of seven SBHCs maintained by the UMC School of Nursing. Carr has served as in instructor in the Accelerated BSN program at UMMC since 2014 and maintains faculty practice as a Family Nurse Practitioner in UMMC’s middle and high school SBHCs. Carr is a faculty liaison for the Myrlie Evers-Williams Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities, serves as a board member for the Theta Beta Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau, and received the Dean’s Scholarship in 2014. After completion of her PhD, Carr hopes to continue work with rural adolescents and seek effective mechanisms for integrating behavioral health and risk reduction services into the school-based setting.