Kelly Bower is an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute.

Dr. Bower’s public health nursing research, practice, and teaching addresses the social and structural determinants of health inequities. Her research has advanced our understanding of the connection between racism, residential segregation, and the neighborhood environment and racial disparities in women’s, maternal, and infant health. In her nursing practice, she has partnered with government and non-profit organizations in Baltimore, birthing hospitals in Maryland, and home visiting programs across the country. Through these partnerships, she has established community advisory boards for maternal and infant health initiatives, provided implicit bias training to more than 3,000 maternal healthcare professionals, and introduced a health equity approach to home visiting programs. She teaches nursing students strategies to promote social justice and health equity and care for marginalized groups and has disseminated educational approaches for training a nursing workforce to provide competent and affirming care for LGBTQI+ individuals and populations.

Dr. Bower has funding from the NIH and HRSA. She earned her BSN and MSN from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and her MPH and PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.