Carole Myers, PhD, RN, FAAN

Carole R. Myers is a Professor Emerita from the University of Tennessee College of Nursing.  Myers graduated from the College of Nursing in 1981 with a master’s degree as a family nurse practitioner. In 1982, she and a fellow Nurse Practitioner opened Tennessee’s only nurse-owned clinic at a time when nurse practitioners were not common. Myers was quickly sensitized to rural Tennessee’s health and health care needs and to the importance of policy as both a facilitator and a barrier to addressing them. 

Myers’s involvement in county government, including work on financing the local community hospital, led to more than 15 years in the business sector, beginning when she was recruited to help Tennessee ALCOA executives understand and address the issues affecting the cost and quality of health care for their employees and retirees. Her work for ALCOA, which became national in scope and involved labor unions, employer business groups on health, health care vendors, and policymakers, and then as an owner and partner in a benefits consulting company, helped nurture her second love for policy and health services research. 

Myers’s doctoral dissertation on the unrealized promise of TennCare in its first 10 years of operation laid the foundation for a successful academic career at UT and other professional accomplishments. As a College of Nursing faculty member and nurse researcher, Myers focused on access to high-quality, cost-effective primary care services, particularly among rural populations, featuring nurse practitioners and other nurse clinicians with advanced degrees, as well as on policy and policymaking. Myers also researched media engagement and competencies among nurses and other health care professionals. 

Although retired, she continues to conduct research and publish in scholarly journals and other outlets. She is the creator and host of HealthConnections, an award-winning biweekly radio show on the Knoxville NPR affiliate WUOT-FM, a frequent writer of op-eds and other commentaries, contributing editor for the American Journal of Nursing Policy and Politics column, and a frequent public speaker.

Myers is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. From 2011 to 2012, she was the inaugural Health Policy Fellow with the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy (now the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs). She was later appointed a fellow with the Baker Center Economic and Community Development Program and, most recently, a Baker School Faculty Fellow. In 2017, Myers was appointed senior fellow at George Washington University School of Nursing’s Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement.