UNH's College of Health and Human Services announces the appointment of Associate Professor Kerry Nolte, Ph.D., as Chair of the Department of Nursing, effective immediately.
Dr. Nolte is a board-certified family nurse practitioner specializing in community health and supportive care of vulnerable populations. In particular, Dr. Nolte is dedicated to advancing the health of and healthcare access for people who use drugs and who are in recovery. She co-founded the New Hampshire Harm Reduction Coalition in 2017, an initiative dedicated to addressing the needs of people who use substances. Under her guidance, New Hampshire Harm Reduction Coalition has provided vital services such as needle exchange programs and a mobile overdose prevention van, actively combating drug-related harms across New Hampshire. Her expertise and service have garnered national recognition, and she was a recipient of UNH’s 2023 Excellence in Public Service award for her work in this area.
Her research work focuses on low barrier overdose prevention, hepatitis C treatment, and wound care. Critical to her research is engagement of people who use drugs and acknowledgement that the most effective solutions to reducing drug related harms come from people who use drugs. She has served as a co-investigator on the NIH-funded Rural Opioid Initiative DISCERNNE (Drug Injection Surveillance and Care Enhancement for Rural Northern New England) Study since 2018. She has been the primary investigator on the Health at Syringe Services study, which seeks to understand health needs of syringe services participants. From 2018 to 2023, Dr. Nolte led the Harm Reduction Education and Technical Assistance Project, funded by NH DHHS, CDC, and NACCHO, which engaged more than 600 participants in a variety of projects.
Dr. Nolte received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Northeastern University, her M.S. in Nursing here at UNH, and her Ph.D. in Nursing at Northeastern.
