Dr. Walker has been a clinician, medical educator and clinical researcher focused on refugee and immigrant health care since 1979. She is internationally recognized for her work in defining the body of knowledge that encompasses refugee and immigrant health care, including publishing the first textbook in the field, Immigrant Medicine, edited by Walker and Barnett. From 2002 to 2004, she chaired the State of Minnesota Immigrant Health Task Force, a group of 70 experts who developed best practices in care for refugees and immigrants in Minnesota that have been published and disseminated internationally. Dr. Walker has published multiple clinical articles, invited commentaries and book chapters on refugee and immigrant health. She lectures widely local, nationally and internationally, and has received numerous awards for her work. She has received more than 20 grants totaling more than $4.0 million, focused primarily on defining best practices in culturally sensitive care for immigrants and disseminating them at HealthPartners, nationally and internationally. She served on HealthPartners Equitable Care Sponsor and Oversight Groups since their inception and helped lead the subgroup that defined HealthPartners demographic data collection, which is critical to reducing health disparities. She also led the Medtronic Foundation grant and design for the current Equitable Care Fellows Program at HealthPartners. As a medical educator, she was the first Program Director for the Global Medicine Pathway at the University of Minnesota, Global Medicine | Medical School, helping to train resident physicians in the field of tropical medicine and refugee and immigrant health. As Dept. Chair for HealthPartners Travel and Tropical Medicine Center, she served as site co-chair for the CDC GeoSentinel program, Home — GeoSentinel an international network of travel medicine clinics engaged in surveillance for emerging infectious diseases and research in travel medicine. She previously served as President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. https://www.astmh.org.  Her work was profiled in the Lancet in February 2017, and featured in a documentary film, American Heart, which aired on PBS and received a regional Emmy award American Heart (2013) - IMDb . Her work was also featured in the book, My Heart It Is Delicious, Setting the Course for Cross Cultural Health Care, the Story of the Center for International Health, by Biloine Young.  my heart it is delicious: Setting the Course for Cross-Cultural Health Care; the story of the CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL HEALTH: Biloine Whiting Young: 9781890434762: Amazon.com: Books  Dr. Walker grew up in Southeast Asia, and speaks Thai and Cambodian. Her career focus has been “globally mobile populations,” defining and implementing best practices in care and developing medical education interventions, all to reduce health disparities. Her areas of expertise include refugee and immigrant health care, travel and tropical medicine, globally mobile populations, LGBTQ+ health, and systems approaches to reduce health disparities.

Former HealthPartners Medical Group positions:
Medical Director, HealthPartners Center for International Health; Department Chair, HealthPartners Travel and Tropical Medicine Center; Co-Chair HealthPartners Equitable Care Sponsors Group. Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota and Former Program Director, Global Medicine, Dept. of Medicine.

Joined the Institute: 2011

Examples of research activities and publications:
Dr. Walker works to define and disseminate best practices in care for refugees, immigrants, and migrants, publish key resources in the field, and translate best practices in refugee and immigrant health care to useful electronic medical record tools for clinicians. Projects include:

• Co-author, UpToDate Guidelines for the Medical Care of Adult Refugees, Immigrants and Migrants to the United States
• Author, CDC Yellow Book Chapter on Care for the LGBTQ+ Traveler
• University of Minnesota CTSI grant: Culturally Competent Cancer Screening: Utilizing Granular Demographic Data and Point Of Care Provider Educational Interventions to Improve Identification Of and Care for Foreign-Born Hepatitis B Carriers (The “Global Health Wizard”)
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Refugee Center of Excellence, including authorship of Immigrant Health Matters Immigrant Health Matters - MN Dept. of Health
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Reduction of Malaria in US Residents Returning From Overseas Travel
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, EpiAid investigation: B12 deficiency in Bhutanese Nepali refugees
• Impact of global health residency training on medical knowledge of immigrant health
• Practicing medicine in the global village: Use of guidelines and virtual networks
• Vitamin D deficiency in refugees
• Characteristics and spectrum of disease among ill returned travelers from pre- and post-earthquake Haiti: the GeoSentinel experience
• Chikungunya: acute fever, rash and debilitating arthralgias in a returning traveler from Haiti
• Guillain-Barre syndrome associated with zika virus infection in a traveler returning from Guyana