Charity Lackey

Charity Lackey (she/her) is a doctorally-prepared nurse scientist and social entrepreneur from Raleigh, NC. Her research focuses on developing culturally sensitive mindfulness-based interventions to ameliorate the stress-related health disparities. Currently, she is a co-investigator with the Young Visionaries for Health, a youth-focused mental health initiative established in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. This project represents over 8 years of field work to establish trust and explore perceptions of mental health/illness in a predominantly African American and rural community. Her primary methodology is Black Feminist Autoethnography which leverages the lived experience of the researcher in relationship to the communities they engage as a primary source of data. She hopes to extend this method into the world of health research by understanding how negative and positive psychosocial experiences impact our ability to coordinate adaptive responses from a neurobiological and immunological perspective. She translates the insights from her research into holistic care through her nursing practice: The Unfiltered Project PLLC. Outside of research, she enjoys yoga, cooking, and playtime with her dog!