SHAQUITA STARKS, PHD, APRN, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC

Starks joined Emory School of Nursing as an assistant clinical professor in May 2020. She is dually certified as a family psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and family nurse practitioner. Starks started her nursing career in 1998, receiving an AAS from Holmes Community College in Grenada, Mississippi. She later received a BS in nursing, an MS in nursing, and a PhD in nursing science in 2006, 2007, and 2016, respectively, from The University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Memphis, Tennessee. She completed a post-master certificate as a family psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner in 2016 but has been practicing in psychiatric mental health nursing since 2014. During her PhD program, she received recognition for outstanding academic performance and community service.

Starks began at Emory School of Nursing teaching mental health for APNs during summer 2020. Prior to Emory, she taught in the DNP program at UTHSC from 2017–20 and started a program of research focused on learning more about chronic stress and quality of life in African American women caregivers. At UTHSC, she also served as a committee chair and a committee member for several PhD students’ dissertations and has mentored PhD students through the SAMHSA/ANA Minority Fellowship Program. Starks received the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration/American Nurses’ Association’s Minority Fellowship Program, predoctoral and postdoctoral award from 2014–16, and in 2017, respectively. She owned and operated a private mental health clinic part-time in Memphis where she treated patients ages 5 and up with mental health disorders.