Texas A&M University | Texas A&M Health

Whitney Garney, PhD, MPH, FAHA

Director of Center for Community Health & Aging Associate Professor Health Behavior, Center for Community Health & Aging | School of Public Health
Contact
  • 979.436.9765
  • 212 Adriance Lab Rd., 1266 TAMU
    College Station, TX 77843-1266
Groups and Affiliations Curriculum Vitae

Biography

Dr. Garney is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the Texas A&M School of Public Health (SPH). She currently serves as the Director for the SPH Center for Community Health and Aging, as well as the Research Director for the Texas A&M Telehealth Institute. Dr. Garney’s research agenda investigates systems approaches to public health prevention and evaluation. Broadly, her projects focus on increasing access to healthcare resources and services for underserved populations. In recent years she has worked primary on interventions and evaluations focused on telehealth, adolescent health, and cardiovascular health. Since 2015, she has secured (PI/Co-PI) ~$28 million in external funding to support her research agenda. In 2023, she was awarded the Policy and Systems Efforts for Advancing Health Education and Promotion Award by the Foundation for the Advancement of Health Education. She was also the recipient of the 2021 Early Career Research Excellence Award at the Texas A&M University School of Education and Human Development.

Dr. Garney served as an Associate Editor for Family and Community Health, from 2020-2023, where edited a special issue on Systems-Level Evaluation, funded by the W.K. Kellog Foundation. She is a fellow of the Council on Epidemiology and Prevention for the American Heart Association where she served on their Workplace Health Steering Committee (2018-2022) and the Policy Implementation and Evaluation Advisory Committee (2019-2021). She has also served as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health, as well as other state and local organizations. From 2018-2021 she was a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Research Leader program conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Education

  • PhD, Kinesiology - Health Education Texas A&M University, 2015
  • MPH, Social & Behavioral Health Texas A&M Health Science Center, 2012
  • BS, Health Texas A&M University, 2010

Research Interests

  • Systems Approaches to Public Health Prevention and Evaluation
  • Social Ecology
  • Healthcare Access
  • Telehealth
  • Health Across the Lifespan

Awards & Honors

  • Policy and Systems Efforts for Advancing Health Education and Promotion Award - The Foundation for Advancement of Health Education. 2023
  • Reconstruct Challenge - University of Louisville. 2023
  • Special Issue Editor - Journal of Family and Community Health. 2023
  • Associate Editor - Journal of Family and Community Health. 2019 - 2023
  • Workplace Steering Committee - American Heart Association. 2018 - 2022
  • Grant reviewer - United Way of the Brazos Valley. 2013, 2018, 2021
  • Early Career Research Excellence Award - Texas A&M University. 2021
  • The Heart Challenge - American Heart Association. 2021
  • Interdisciplinary Research Leader Fellow - Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2018-2021
  • Fellow of the American Heart Association - American Heart Association, Council on Epidemiology and Prevention. 2020
  • Policy Implementation and Evaluation Advisory Committee - American Heart Association. 2019 - 2020

Teaching Interests

  • Systems Thinking for Public Health
  • Complexity Science

Accreditations

CEPH Accreditation Logo CAHME Accreditation