Biography

Dr. Gary was recently appointed to serve on the National Advisory Mental Health Council by the Honorable Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson. She is also a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Dr. Gary has provided consultation to numerous world communities including the Republics of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana, the Kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland and others. Countries such as Barbados, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, have invited her assistance. She has also visited China, Japan, and Hong Kong, with the perspective of better understanding their health and mental health care systems. In collaboration with the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, she provides health related consultation to the indigenous people of Ecuador. She Chairs the Executive Committee of the National Advisory Committee for the Minority Doctoral Fellowship Program, which is affiliated with the National Institutes of Health and the American Nurses Association. Currently, she represents organized nursing as a member of the National Consortium on Interdisciplinary Programs in mental health, the NIH Roundtable, and other national organizations and committees. As a W.K. Kellogg National Leadership Fellow, Dr. Gary had the opportunity to travel throughout the world and assess leadership from formal and informal perspectives. At the national level, she is one of 17 members of the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health. This Committee makes recommendations to the United States Congress through the Office of the Secretary. In Florida, Dr. Gary also serves on the Advocacy Committee (formally, Governor's Committee for People with Disabilities) and chairs its Bylaws Committee; she is a member of the Florida Supreme Court's Committee on Justice and Fairness for children and adolescents. Dr. Gary is the recipient of the National Honorary Human Rights Award presented by the American Nurses Association in 1996. That same year, she received the Governor's Medallion for Service to Troubled Children, the Community Volunteer of the Year Golden Rule Award, Florida A.& M. University President's Medallion, and others. As a volunteer, she teaches ethics at the local confinement centers where children and juveniles are incarcerated. Her research can best be described as health risk reduction: HIV/AIDS; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity in children; femicide; children's responses to violence and abuse and juvenile delinquency. In July of 1999, the National Black Nurses Association awarded her a one-year grant to study hormone replacement in rural Black women. She has published her major findings and presented several research papers based on this research project. Research and theoretical findings can be examined in detail through such journals as the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, the American Journal of Public Health, Issues in Mental Health Nursing, the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the Journal of the National Black Nurses Association, and others. Dr. Gary teaches undergraduate and graduate students. She is also a faculty member in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Florida. She lives in a rural community where she assists on a family farm. Bonsai and orange trees are her preferred plants; beef cattle present her with continuous daily challenges.