Brief Bio: Summer 2024

Sheila Y. McKinney, PhD, MA, CHES

Dr. McKinney has decades of experience as a community advocate for HIV prevention and cancer screening among women and marginalized communities, a public health educator, a program evaluation specialist, and a health researcher.

Her extensive education includes a BA in Political Science, an MA in Education, and a PhD in Public Health specializing, in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.  

Dr McKinney was an Assistant Professor at Jackson State University's College of Health Sciences, Department of Behavior and Environmental Health. As an instructor, she taught many of the concentration and research methods courses (qualitative, mixed, and quantitative) for the Master’s- and Doctoral-level programs. She also conducted secondary data analyses on topics relevant to social determinants of health, women’s health, and maternal and child health in Mississippi.

Before teaching, Dr. McKinney was selected as a Global Health Equity Program Fellow at Fogarty International Center (NIH), where she conducted a clinic-based investigation on cervical cancer screening among seropositive women linked to HIV care in the Dominican Republic. Her research investigated the influence of culture, stigma, social norms, and other social determinants on women’s receipt of Pap smears.

She has conducted several community-based studies in South Florida to address health disparities in HIV testing and health screening for breast and colon cancer among ethnically diverse Black populations— particularly among women, those who have newly emigrated to the US, and Afro Caribbeans. She is a member of the AHIM Black Indigenous People of Color Board.

Dr. McKinney has volunteered with several community-based organizations as a program evaluation specialist, providing technical assistance with program evaluation design and implementation, grant development, and data collection methods. Her interests remain in supporting organizations created to improve the health and social conditions of women, youth, and residents who are disproportionately impacted in marginalized communities.