Biography
Karen Armitage is a pediatrician and public health physician. For more than two decades, she worked for New Mexico Department of Health, serving as Chief Medical Officer for the last 3 years of her tenure. She was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in 2014-15, and joined the faculty of College of Population Health (COPH) in 2016 as Interim Dean. She is currently Associate Clinical Professor and Director of Health Policy at COPH. She is a graduate of the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, and completed a pediatric residency and a post-doctoral fellowship in child health promotion at University of New Mexico.
Areas of Specialty
- Health policy and advocacy
- Innovative health sciences curricula
- Accelerating translation of research to health policy
- Optimizing health at every age and stage of disease
Achievements & Awards
Founder and co-attending physician, Legislative Action and Public Health Systems Rotation at New Mexico State Legislature and New Mexico Department of Health
Key Publications
- Kaufman, A., Roth, P.B., Larson, R.S., Ridenour, N., Welage, L.S., Romero-Leggott, V., Nkouaga, C., Armitage, K., McKinney, K. Vision 2020 Measures University of New Mexico’s Success by Health of Its State. Am J Prev Med 2015;48(1):108-115.
- Berger, L.R., Saunders, S., Armitage, K. J., Schauer, L., Promoting the Use of Car Safety Devices for Infants: An Intensive Health Education Approach. Pediatrics, 74 (1): 16-19,1984
- Armitage, K.J., Schneiderman, L.H., Bass, R.A., Response of Physicians to Medical Complaints in Men and Women. JAMA, 241 (20): 2186-87, 1979
- Contributed refereed model of successful practice
- o Armitage MD, K., Pacheco MD, M., Dirksen MD, D., Kaufman MD, A. Preparing Family Medicine Residents for Essential Public Health Roles: The Community Medicine and Legislative Action Rotation. Healthy People 2020 and Education for Health, Successful Practices for Clinical Professions, Association for Prevention Teaching and Research web site: http://www.aptrweb.org/educationforhealth/successfulpractices.html Accepted for posting September, 2011.
Research
Dr. Armitage is currently researching innovative health sciences curricula in health policy at UNM School of Medicine and seeking IRB approval to pilot an intervention optimizing health at every age and stage of illness to protect high-risk populations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Courses Taught
- Population Health Management
- What’s Hot in Population Health
- Public Health for Pharmacists
- Introduction to Health Policy/IPV (Family Medicine Clerkship, UNM School of Medicine)
- Legislative Action and Public Health Systems rotation, PL-2, 1+2 Family Medicine Residency