Biography
Dr. Melanie Turk joined the faculty in August 2009 and is an Associate Professor in
the School of Nursing. Her research interests include health promotion and disease
prevention through lifestyle change and weight loss, particularly for diabetes prevention
among older adults and other vulnerable populations. She has numerous published manuscripts,
abstracts, book chapters, and a textbook about statistics and data analysis literacy
for nurses. She also serves as a peer reviewer for several scholarly journals and
as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Transcultural Nursing.
Dr. Turk designed and has directed the Nursing Honors Program since 2016. She currently
teaches in the MSN, DNP, and PhD programs. In her work with doctoral students, Dr.
Turk has led global studies programs for DNP and PhD students in Rome, Italy and Dublin,
Ireland. She became a Fellow in the Transcultural Nursing Society Scholars in 2021.
Education
PhD, Nursing, University of Pittsburgh
MSN, Nursing Research, University of Pittsburgh
BSN, Nursing, Duquesne University
Expertise
- Behavioral treatment of obesity
- Weight loss and maintenance
- Behavior change for health promotion among vulnerable populations
Research
Dr. Turk's focus is on behavioral weight management for disease prevention in underserved
populations. With a grant from the Aetna Foundation, she led a six-site healthy eating
and physical activity intervention study among 120 older adults in socio-economically
disadvantaged communities. She has also conducted qualitative research to learn about
the eating and physical activity behaviors of immigrant populations in the US. Her
work as a co-investigator and dissertation chairperson further led to collaborations
on studies of virtual recruitment to a National Diabetes Prevention Program (NDPP),
adherence to a mobile-app for dietary self-monitoring, and factors linked to weight
status among Salvadoran infants, among others. She is currently leading an 3-year,
NIH-funded study to learn about barriers and facilitators to the implementation and
use of the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program. She also serves as the Nursing Liaison
on a foundation-funded grant awarded to the School of Pharmacy to increase access
to preventive community health programs, including the NDPP. Her role is to help oversee
the virtual delivery and evaluation of the NDPP at Duquesne.
