Rate My Professor Kristen Ogilvie

Kristen Ogilvie, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Dean of Student Affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage, holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Arizona State University (2008), an M.A. in Anthropology from Arizona State University, and a B.A. in Anthropology and Spanish from the University of Arizona. She joined the UAA faculty in 2014 following many years as a researcher with the Alaska Office of the Pacific Institute for Research & Evaluation, where she managed three National Institutes of Health-funded studies on substance misuse and risky behavior prevention in Alaskan communities. For over ten years, she collaborated with rural Alaskan communities on culturally and contextually appropriate behavioral health improvement strategies and advocated for meaningful community participation in behavioral health research. She serves as a qualitative co-investigator in such studies and teaches courses in general anthropology, applied anthropology, cultural anthropology, and research methods.

Ogilvie's research specializations include sociocultural anthropology, medical anthropology, behavioral health and wellness, alcohol and substance abuse, and rural health disparities with a focus on Alaska. Her applied research engages public health discourse on health disparities and social determinants of health, explores translation of research to practice in rural and underserved communities, examines community-based prevention of substance misuse including inhalants, over-the-counter and prescription drugs, and assesses the history, effectiveness, and unintended consequences of community local options restrictions on alcohol. Key publications include "Demographic and contextual factors associated with inhalant use among youth in rural Alaska" (Driscoll et al., 2012, International Journal of Circumpolar Health), "Preventing youth’s use of inhalants and other harmful legal products in frontier Alaskan communities: A randomized trial" (Johnson et al., 2009, Prevention Science), "Changing community readiness to prevent the use of inhalants and other harmful legal products in Alaska" (Ogilvie et al., 2008, Journal of Community Health), and her dissertation "Where Science Meets Community: An Alaskan Case Study of a Community-Centered Approach" (2008, Arizona State University). She has received the National Institutes of Health Student Loan Repayment Program Scholarship in Health Disparities Research and the Philip Mason Thompson Award for excellence and socially relevant dissertation research.