Biosketches
Dr. Kirsten Senturia has been an applied medical anthropologist working domestically and abroad for the last 19 years. She received her PhD in anthropology from UCLA and is now affiliate faculty at the University of Washington, School of Public Health. Dr. Senturia's earliest interests included maternal and child health as well as environmental health. In the past ten years, she has developed an expertise working with local community-based organizations in the areas of domestic violence and immigrant and refugee issues.
Dr. Senturia worked for nine years at Public Health-Seattle and King County where she was the lead qualitative researcher in the Assessment, Program Development and Evaluation unit. In this capacity, she managed and conducted evaluations (on topics such as early childhood education and social support for domestic violence victims), developed and executed assessments on community needs (in areas such as social support for struggling families and teen attitudes toward sexual activity) and trained others on the use of qualitative methods for rapid evaluation and assessment.
Intent on working in partnership with community-based organizations and agencies, Dr. Senturia focuses her approach on cooperative project development and execution. She has partnered most recently with government agencies (city and county) and with local community-based organizations (ReWA, Northwest Network, SIHB). She has extensive experience putting together funding resources (NIH, NIJ, CDCAP) to address problems which cross community and agency boundaries.
As an independent evaluator, Dr. Senturia has worked in a number of organizational settings for diverse clients including the City of Seattle (evaluating the Multilingual Access Project), King County (assessing teen dating violence and helping develop a technology-based intervention), and the Seattle Indian Health Board (assisting in the evaluation of a colorectal screening intervention).
Dr. Senturia has been training others in community-based participatory research from her earliest stints in Poland and Romania to her recent work for the State of Washington, Department of Health. She conducts workshops on rapid assessment procedures and applied research methods for professionals working in public health. These workshops provide skill- and team-building opportunities.
Working in diverse settings and in partnership with many different communities is what maintains Dr. Senturia's commitment to applied research and evaluation. Her strengths working across disciplines (with both qualitative and quantitative professionals), and making assessment and evaluation accessible to non-professionals distinguish her from others in the field. Dr. Senturia is able to conduct a project, from the smallest assessment in one neighborhood, to the largest evaluation of a multi-site intervention, in partnership with both community stakeholders and funders.
Return to the bio page, or view Kirsten's curriculum vitae here.