Faculty: Professor
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC
Dr. Debra J. Barksdale is a Professor and Director of the DNP program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). She is certified as both a family and an adult nurse practitioner (NP). She is also a certified nurse educator and a Fellow of both the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and the American Adademy of Nursing. Dr. Barksdale is past President of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (NONPF). She is a Department of Health and Human Services Primary Health Care Policy Fellow.
On September 23, 2010, Dr. Barksdale was one of 19 members appointed to the Board of Governors for the new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. She was the only nurse appointed to the PCORI Board. The purpose of the Institute is to identify National priorities for research and to establish the research project agenda for the United States. PCORI will assist patients, clinicians, purchasers, and policy-makers to make informed health decisions. PCORI will advance the quality and relevance of evidence concerning the manner in which diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, monitored, and managed through research and evidence synthesis. In 2012, she was reappointed for six more years. She currently chairs PCORI's Engagement, Dissimination and Implementation Committee (EDIC).
In addition to teaching at Carolina, she is a appointed to the Center for Faculty Excellence Advisory Board for the University, and is a member of the steering committee for the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and in the SON, is a member of the Biobehavioral Lab Advisory board and the faculty development committee. She is the Director of the DNP program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Barksdale's research focuses on stress and cardiovascular disease in Black Americans. Specifically, she studies the relationships among contextual and psychological factors, physiological stress responses and blood pressure. Her current work explores the underlying hemodynamic determinants of hypertension, particularly sleep blood pressure and sleep total peripheral resistance, and the cortisol awakening response. She has been funded National Institute of Health research grant: Hypertension in Black Americans: Environment, Behavior, and Biology and is currently (2014) a co-investigator on a study examining arterial stiffness in childhood cancer survivors.
Dr. Barksdale has over 25 years of NP experience and has been a NP in urgent care, primary care, home care and care of the underserved. She was the Administrative Director for Medlantic Med+Care a clinic of the Washington Hospital Center Network in Washington D.C. and Co-Director of Imani, a faith based Nurse Manage Clinic in Detroit Michigan. She currently practices as a volunteer at the Robert Nixon Clinic for the homeless in Chapel Hill. She has numerous publications, presentations, and abstracts related to research, diversity, NP education and practice. Dr. Barksdale is a practitioner, educator, researcher, administrator, and advocate.