Lynn McKinley - Grant, MD
Associate Professor of Dermatology at Howard University
Lynn's Story
Dr Lynn McKinley-Grant, an Associate Professor of Dermatology at Howard University College of Medicine. Prior to joining Howard University, she was Vice Chair for Diversity and Community Engagement in Dermatology at Duke University, an Associate Professor of Dermatology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and a Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. McKinley-Grant is also a past president of both the Skin of Color Society and the Washington DC Dermatology Society. With over 25 years of experience in academia, clinical practice, and research, she is an expert in complex medical dermatology and treats patients of all ethnicities and skin types.
To provide excellent, healing, and empathetic patient care, Dr. McKinley-Grant emphasizes teaching how to listen and connect with patients using all sensory tools —eyes, ears, nose, and hands. She develops medical curricula that utilize the arts as a pedagogical tool to enhance accurate clinical diagnoses across all skin types, fostering empathy and cultural competency. Dr. McKinley-Grant received the American Academy of Dermatology Award for Arts and Humanities. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Colby College Art Museum and is the co-founder and of the former Insight Institute, a nonprofit organization committed to arts education.
Lynn's Research
Hidden Figure in Healthcare & Health Lore
Dr Dorothy Doyle Harrison (1914-2021) RN, MPH, PHD, is a hidden figure and Afrofuturist leader in healthcare and health justice lore. Her areas of expertise included public health, nursing, mentoring women in nursing and medicine, engineering, linguistics, behavioral science /biofeedback, anthropology, computer technology and photography.
Through photography she documented her professional journey, history, community and family life, including 38 years at Howard University College of Medicine and Nursing in Washington, DC. She is an unknown photo historian. She always had a darkroom to develop her photography. Her collection contains 10K photos, hundreds of books, 50 boxes of papers, hundreds of videos, audiocassettes and digital photos to be archived documenting her early work in her specialty.
Dr. Harrison’s sister Mable Staupers and Mary McLeod Bethune were forces behind desegregation of nursing in the military before World War 2 and had a major influence on her career. At age 25 she served 2 years (1945-1947) in China during the China War as a nurse with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 2 years in Brazil(1948-1950)with the United Nations after certification for midwifery and practiced nursing and public health in the Caribbean 1950’s.
While an assistant professor at Howard she received her PHD from Catholic University in Medical Anthropology and was faculty in Family and Preventive Medicine. She was awarded a fellowship/instructor at Yale University in Behavior Science /Energy Medicine/or 2 years, professor at Stonybrook university before returning to Howard University. She developed the first biofeedback clinic at Howard to deal with stress, violence, hypertension, diabetes, mental illness and heart disease. She co-authored the Head Start health care program in the early 60’s. While at Howard and as a health care grant writer entrepreneur she received 800K from NIH and healthcare nonprofits. She retired as an associate professor in the mid 1970’s. She remained active after retirement and pledged Delta Sigma Theta at age 75.