Emily Hurley, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Research Assistant Professor of Population Health, University of Kansas School of Medicine
Full Biography
As Children’s Mercy Research Institute (CMRI) grows its research programs, the institute has welcomed many innovative, early-career investigators to its roster of researchers. These investigators bring their novel ideas, unique talents, and diverse interests to CMRI. The following profile is one in our series on emerging principal investigators.
Motivated to help find solutions to global health crises such as HIV/AIDS, Emily Hurley, PhD, MPH, Health Services and Outcomes Research, pursued a career as a social scientist. “I went into public health because I was fascinated by how social, behavioral, political and interpersonal factors affect health,” she said. “Now, I partner with clinicians and community members to figure out how the social science pieces of the puzzle fit into applied health programs and the broader advancement of health and medicine.”
Dr. Hurley cites the lack of access to HIV treatment in the early 2000s as a big motivator for choosing a career in public health. “When I was in college, this was a dominating issue,” she said. “There were drugs available, but they weren't getting to people that needed them.” Even when global funding began to expand access to HIV treatment, there were still barriers. After serving as a Health Education Volunteer in the Peace Corps, Dr. Hurley earned her PhD at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where her dissertation research focused on how effective patient-provider communication could help keep people in HIV care and on effective treatment in sub-Saharan Africa.
After receiving her PhD in 2017, she joined Children’s Mercy Kansas City (CMKC) as a postdoctoral fellow to work with mentor Kathy Goggin, PhD. Dr. Goggin’s research in patient-provider communications and work on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa aligned with Dr. Hurley’s interests. Dr. Hurley joined the faculty at CMRI in 2019.
Dr. Hurley is in the middle of a three-year project funded by the National Institutes of Health to modernize the messaging around HIV testing in Uganda. For this project, her team works with the Ministry of Health and several hospitals in Uganda. “It’s time to replace those dusty old billboards from the earlier days of the HIV epidemic that are not sending the right message for 2024,” she said. Her team is rolling out new, more hopeful communication that focuses on the benefits of getting tested.
Historically, messaging around HIV testing was frequently fear-based, and people may still be reluctant to test because they view a positive result as the end to relationships or plans to start families. However, biomedical advancements, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), help prevent the spread of HIV between partners and unborn children. Dr. Hurley and her partners want the new messaging to focus on the hope that PrEP offers to people who test positive. “We want to tell a different story about HIV testing by saying, ‘Testing is something you can do to gain the ability to have a healthy family, to have children,’” said Dr. Hurley. “Hopefully, we can reduce the stigma and let people know that HIV testing is not something to be feared.”
In addition to her research in HIV, Dr. Hurley also founded and leads the CMRI Formative Research Team. The team collaborates with other researchers throughout Children’s Mercy to ensure projects and interventions are responsive to the needs of the target population. “The researchers we partner with all have specific knowledge about the health problems they're working on. We come in as partners with the research expertise to bring out the social, behavioral, and patient/family perspective to help design more responsive, effective interventions,” said Dr. Hurley.
Last year, her team was active in 21 collaborations. Recent projects have included working with Robin Shook, PhD, Children’s Healthy Lifestyles & Nutrition, to assess perspectives of clinicians, community organizations, and patients and their families on how to best connect healthy lifestyles screening to effective community-based resource referrals. Her team also frequently collaborates with Genomic Medicine, including on a recent project to create a patient- and family-driven agenda for research on rare conditions led by Courtney Berrios, MS.
Dr. Hurley enjoys the balance of her two roles at CMRI. “I get to wear two hats; I lead my own work in HIV and global health, and my formative research role lets me constantly explore new ideas, projects and partnerships” said Dr. Hurley.
We want to tell a different story about HIV testing by saying, ‘Testing is something you can do to gain the ability to have a healthy family, to have children. Hopefully, we can reduce the stigma and let people know that HIV testing is not something to be feared.
In addition to her work at CMRI, Dr. Hurley is a co-lead on a team at Frontiers Clinical & Translational Science Institute that promotes interdisciplinary research teams. She is also an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and research faculty in population health at the University of Kansas School of Medicine.