Rachel Adler

Ph.D., APRN, PMHNP-BC, AGNP-C

Professor of Nursing
University of Texas Health San Antonio

Dr. Rachel H. Adler, PhD, APRN, PMHNP-BC, AGNP-C is Professor of Nursing at UT Health San Antonio. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Arizona State University in 2000 and spent her first sabbatical earning the academic credentials to become a registered nurse (Drexel University 2008) and her second sabbatical becoming an advanced practice nurse, currently credentialed as both a psychiatric and primary care nurse practitioner. Her program of research is translational in focus, as she seeks to make impact by meeting the needs of the patients she serves. A seasoned ethnographer and skilled in anthropologically grounded qualitative methods, her expertise includes men’s mental health, suicide prevention, psychosocial oncology, health disparities and medical anthropology. She has broad clinical and research experience working with and publishing about vulnerable populations such as veterans, people with cancer and their caregivers, immigrants, the homeless, and both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. Dr. Adler left her anthropology professorship at The College of New Jersey, a liberal arts-oriented institution, to join the faculty of UT Health San Antonio School of Nursing in 2021. She made the career change (and the move to Texas) for the opportunity to engage in team-based, scientific research in the health sciences–scholarship that impacts patients and research subjects in direct and tangible ways. Hence, she adds a novel and valuable skill set to the TOUGH study.