Dr. Outlaw serves as an adjunct faculty/consultant for this Project. She has over forty years of experience as a clinician, researcher, educator, and policy maker in public mental health and substance use services. Currently, she is the academic consultant for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) at the American Nurses Association (ANA). In that role, she has been the principal architect and director of the MFP/ANA’s formal Mentoring Program, which has been manualized and automated. Prior, she was an Associate Professor at Meharry Medical College and the Director of the Meharry Youth Health and Wellness Center, a health care delivery system for adolescents with a special focus on Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ youth. She was also an associate professor and director of the graduate psychiatric mental health nursing program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. For eight years, Dr. Outlaw was the Assistant Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Use Services.

She has written in the areas of cultural diversity, management of aggression, seclusion and restraint, the role of religion, spirituality, and the meaning of prayer for people with cancer, the use of the Geriatric Depression Scale with older African Americans, Black women and depression, children’s mental health, stress, and racism on the health of African Americans, and mental health parity. Her most recent publications have focused on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) and Trauma Informed Care, African Americans and Clinical Trials, African American Women and Caregiving, and Mental Health Needs of Minority Transgender Youth. She was a co-editor of the 7th Edition of Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care, which won the American Nurses Association’s Book of the Year Award.

Among her many honors and awards are being a mayoral appointment and Chair of Healthy Nashville Leadership Council, Outstanding Alumni Award, the MFP/ANA, Distinguished Service to Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Award, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing; Well Within Professional Award National Alliance on Mental Illness Davidson County; and the Circle of Care Award, Tennessee Voices for Children, Nashville, Tennessee.

Dr. Outlaw received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Berea College, a master’s degree from Boston College, a doctoral degree from the Catholic University of America, and postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.