CHANGE Team Meet Our Director Dr. Lovoria Williams

From the time she was a young girl growing up in western Kentucky, Dr. Lovoria B. Williams knew that she wanted to be a nurse. Fast forward to today, and that young girl grew up to become a nurse scientist who’s done everything from critical care nursing, to caring for the homeless, veterans, tobacco dependent patients, to teaching other nurses and leading the charge for evidence-based community interventions to improve health outcomes for Communities of Color and the medically underserved. 

Dr. Williams is a family nurse practitioner, tobacco treatment specialist, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky, and the president of the Lexington Kentucky Chapter of the National Black Nurses Association. Her career is centered on achieving social justice and shifting the longstanding health inequities in this country through research and clinical practice. Dr. Williams is a boots-on-the-ground, proven change-maker, collaborator, mentor, and health equity nurse leader. With her deep understanding of the power of the church, the majority of her research is conducted in collaboration with Black church congregations and leaders.

Her research is guided by the input of an eight-member Community Advisory Board and her interventions are delivered by trained community members.  She has set the vision of the CHANGE Team to emerge as a national leader in impactful nurse-driven community-level interventions.