Alumni-in-Residence: Sign Up for Office Hours with Dr. Kimberlee Wyche-Etheridge '87
Students who sign up for office hours with Dr. Kimberlee Wyche-Etheridge '87 should come with a passion for social justice in health and a passion to promote health equity. They should be interested in how to make a difference in the world by addressing health disparities, and the root causes that lead to these disparities.
While Dr. Wyche-Etheridge has done this as a public health pediatrician and most recently as a professor of public health at a medical and public health school, students don’t have to be Pre-med to sign up for these office hours. In fact, a fundamental interest in discussing a career that integrates public health and public service for marginalized, under-served communities into a career - which may or may not be medicine - is the foundation for these office hour appointments.
Dr. Wyche-Etheridge has a strong interest in prenatal and perinatal health outcomes/disparities and health equity, especially as they relate to infant mortality, and child wellbeing. After practicing pediatric and adolescent medicine in a health service shortage area outside of Boston, MA, she completed a Minority Health Fellowship at Harvard School of Public Health. She joined the Metropolitan Nashville /Davidson County Public Health Department in 2001, where she worked for 12 years as the County’s Maternal Child Health Expert. An accomplished grant writer, Dr. Wyche Etheridge has successfully spearheaded the application and receipt of over $10,000,000 in grants for program expansion benefiting women, children and families.
In 2014, Dr. Wyche-Etheridge was recruited to assist in the development of a Public Health Practice agenda at Tennessee State University where she worked closely with the Dean of the College of Health Sciences to create public health experiences for students and faculty at this Historically Black University. Based on her work at TSU, she was again recruited in 2016 to join the public health and pediatric faculty at Meharry Medical College, and to help build the college of public health.
Her passion has led her to continue to work in her free time. She developed a Tweens to Queens Program, working longitudinally with preteen girls as an upstream preconception health model. She also has developed, and conducts Puberty Parties for small groups of mothers and daughters to provide accurate information on human physiology, development and age appropriate sexual health. Although accomplished in her chosen field, Dr. Wyche-Etheridge’s number one priority is her family, and raising her two children ages 10 and 13.
To book appointments instantly, students must submit a Loeb Center-approved resume. (Learn about this approval process here.) To book without an approved resume, please upload / submit your pending document, then e-mail careers@amherst.edu with your availability.