Biography
Allison Barlow, PhD, MPH joined the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health in 1991. In April 2016, she was named Director of the Center. She now directs the Center alongside two Indigenous co-directors, Dr. Melissa Walls and Dr. Donald Warne. Early in her career, Allison helped launched the behavioral and mental health programs for the Center. Her health research and program portfolio focus on child, adolescent, and family health and youth development for Indigenous communities living on reservation lands. Projects to date have spanned teen parenting outreach and early child development; suicide, depression and substance abuse prevention; diabetes and obesity prevention; and youth entrepreneurship and life skills training. All programs center on training and employing Indigenous teams who design, direct, and evaluate the interventions for their tribal communities. She also co-founded the NativeVision program in 1997 with the NFL Players Association to promote Native American youth development through the mobilization of professional athletes to participate in camps and afterschool activities promoting education and healthy lifestyles. She also played a key role in the development of the Johns Hopkins public health certificate in American Indian Health for Native scholars and allied health professionals. Today, she helps lead the Center’s international work funded by a $28M LEGO Foundation award to promote early childhood well-being and family health through the Center’s Family Spirit early childhood home-visiting program; she also co-leads an NIH Center of Excellence with its primary director Dr. Melissa Walls to promote cultural strengths-based approaches to substance use prevention and recovery.
Dr. Barlow’s education includes a PhD from University of Amsterdam (2013); an MPH from Johns Hopkins (1997), an MA pursued through a Rotary International Graduate Scholarship Award from the University of Melbourne, Australia, focused on Aboriginal studies (1990), and a BA from Dartmouth College (1986).