Zoë Murphy decided to pursue her MPH after her first career as a 911 dispatcher. While obtaining her MPH at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC), she worked as a research on a perinatal smoking cessation study with KUMC’s Department of Population Health and OBGYN clinics. Zoë executed study project start-up and then was the primary study coordinator, directing recruitment, enrollment, and management of study participants. During her time at KUMC, Zoë also worked on a study coordinating HPV vaccination efforts with HIV PrEP patients in the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Due to a desire to affect more macro-level change, Zoë accepted a position as a project manager with the Collaborative to Advance Health Services (CAHS) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) with the Peer Recovery Center of Excellence (PR CoE). She was the project manager for the state budget analysis report for the Optimizing Recovery Funding (ORF) initiative of the PR CoE, which was an analysis of how states are spending SAMHSA dollars on recovery support services (RSS), with recommendations on best practices and strategies for states in providing financial support for RSS and recovery community organizations (RCOs). As a result of her passion for sexual and reproductive health and harm reduction, Zoë also works on the National Clinical Training Center for Family Planning (NCTCFP) and the Kansas City Harm Reduction grants at CAHS.
Zoë earned her Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Kansas Medical Center and her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in English and Anthropology from Skidmore College. She is also a certified Family Planning Health Worker (FPHW). Zoë has three publications, two of which are based on her MPH capstone work and on which she is the first author (“PrEP patient attitudes, beliefs and perceived barriers surrounding HPV vaccination: a qualitative study of semistructured interviews with PrEP patients in primary care clinics in Kansas and Missouri” in BMJ Open; “Stakeholder Perspectives on Linking HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis with Human Papillomavirus Vaccine” in AIDS Patient Care and STDs; and “Quitting Smoking before and after Pregnancy: Study Methods and Baseline Data from a Prospective Cohort Study” in IJERPH).
Funding for this initiative was made possible by grant no. 1H79TI083022 from SAMHSA. The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
