Fellows

Denise Burnette, PhD, MSSW, MS is the Samuel S. Wurtzel Endowed Chair in Social Work at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work. Dr. Burnette was previously a Professor of Social Work at Columbia University, where she has served as Associate Dean and chair of the doctoral program. Her research focuses on global population aging and mental health and psychosocial well-being of older adults in low-resource settings. Since 2008, Dr. Burnette has served as an International Scholar and Regional Coordinator for Social Work with the Open Society initiative to build social work research and education capacity in the Central Asia, Caucasus and Balkans region. She has completed Senior Fulbright Scholar fellowships at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai and the Centre for Research on HIV and AIDS at the University of Botswana.

Dr. Burnette has more than a decade of social work practice experience in psychiatric and medical settings. Her current research is on cultural representations and help-seeking for dementia in India, cross-cultural validation of health and mental health measures for research on aging in Mongolia, social inclusion of older adults in rural Albania and HIV prevention with persons aged 50 + in Botswana, Malawi and South Africa. With the Columbia Global Center | South Asia, she is also Co-PI on a multi-year, multi-site project to improve the quality of primary education in India. Dr. Burnette’s research has been funded by governments, foundations and non-profit entities. She is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and the Gerontological Society of America.

To access Dr. Burnette’s Faculty Page, click here: Virginia Commonwealth University, School of Social Work.