Dr. Barbara Guthrie is a noted nurse practitioner and researcher. She received her diploma in nursing from the Howard University’s Freedmen Hospital School of Nursing. In addition, Dr. Guthrie received her Bachelor’s degree in nursing from Boston University, her master’s of science in nursing (Family Health) from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and her Ph.D. from New York University School of Nursing.

Guthrie’s research and health activism, in combination, has afforded her the privilege of working in concert with adolescent girls from diverse ethnic, social class, and environmental contexts to identify, research, and design ethnic and gender-responsive health promotion programs. Always foregrounding the intersectional issues of ethnicity, gender, age, and class, her collaborative research efforts with adolescent females have led to her receiving funding from such agencies as The National Institute of Drug Abuse, National Cancer Institute (NCI), and National Institute for Nursing Research.

Her NCI funding allowed her to collaborate with urban and suburban adolescent females in the design, development, and empirical testing of one of the first gender and ethnic responsive peer-led sexually transmitted infections (STIs)/HIV/AIDS prevention programs titled, ” Girl Talk.” Evidence of the impact of gender-responsive prevention programs is the adoption and implementation of modified versions of this program by selected Michigan Schools and Community agencies, several Juvenile Justice Systems’ (JJS) Diversional Programs in the State of Florida’s PACE Center for Girls Program, Massachusetts Girls’ Programs, Michigan’s Vista Maria ‘s girls’ program, and more recently, a San Antonio Texas’ JJS girls’ program.

Similarly, Dr. Guthrie conducted one of the first cross-sectional ethnic and gender-responsive theory-driven substance use research studies. The study examined the dynamic nexus of how race, gender, class, relations, and environmental contexts influence adolescent females’ parallel or co-initiation of substance use /abuse and sexually related behaviors. This research project was funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). Dr. Guthrie has systematically published her findings from “Female Adolescent Substance Experience Study” (FASES) and the “Girl Talk” studies in a wide variety of interdisciplinary journals (Journal of Family and Community Health, Nursing Research, Journal of Early Adolescence, Journal of Adolescent Health, and the American Journal of Addiction).

As a result, she is asked to speak and work with various local, state, national health systems, community agencies, schools, and policymakers to develop gender and ethnically responsive health-related policies and programs. Her expertise is sought by the various levels of health administrators, providers, and policymakers.