PhD, MPH, MPA, CHES®
Assistant Professor of Nursing
John L. and Helen Kellogg Endowed Faculty Scholar
Rush University College of Nursing
Violence Prevention | Digital Mental Health | Biopsychosocial Stress and Resilience
Chuka Nestor Emezue (pronounced Choo‑Kah • A‑May‑Zu‑Way) — I'm an Assistant Professor of Women, Children, and Family Nursing and the John L. and Helen Kellogg Endowed Faculty Scholar at Rush University, College of Nursing. I hold a Ph.D. in Nursing Science, a master’s degree in Public Health (MPH), and a master's degree in Public Affairs (MPA), all from my alma mater, the University of Missouri-Columbia. And a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from Nigeria.
My work is inspired by Frederick Douglass’s astute observation:
Broadly, my research integrates digital health tools, biopsychosocial science, and community-engaged methods to address youth and family violence, including interpersonal violence, mental health challenges, and stress-related coping patterns.
I began this work by developing digital and community-based interventions for girls and women who survived intimate partner violence. Over time, I moved upstream to address the use of violence itself, working with men and fathers whose behaviors shape family and child outcomes. This shift was both intentional and necessary.
Spoiler alert: It is incredibly challenging to change certain entrenched behaviors in adulthood. But it is also essential for interrupting intergenerational cycles of harm.
I therefore pivoted toward a primary prevention focus, centering justice-involved Black, rural, immigrant, and Latinx boys and young men who use and survive violence. The goal is simple and urgent: to reach young people before they arrive in emergency departments, courtrooms, or worse.
Over the past five years, I have co-developed culturally grounded, technology-enabled interventions with young men, shaping everything from content and aesthetics to deployment and ongoing adaptation. The work has been instructive. Developing technology-based interventions can be unforgiving, but they also offer powerful opportunities for innovation and scale. When done well, they provide a direct and often radical way to reach those least likely to engage with traditional services.
Culture and biology are intricately linked and jointly determine behavioral tendencies across the lifespan. My recent research bridges culture and biology, exploring how chronic adversity becomes biologically embedded, influencing stress-response systems, and how these physiological changes interact with structural stressors such as racism, food insecurity, community violence, and poverty.
CURRENT PROJECTS
An intervention in your pocket, as we call it. That is on mobile/web platforms, with an AI-supported chatbot (called DEVON) that delivers life-skills coaching, pre-crisis mental health support, and safety planning for young Black males in high-violence, low-resource settings. Download the app here on the App Store or Google Play. Email me if you need a login code -- you will need one in the current version. Sorry.
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FatherlyACT (in development) – A trauma-informed father–child dyadic program to strengthen relationships and mitigate the intergenerational effects of domestic violence on mothers and children. I can't say too much about this one yet -- but we are cooking!
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Technology and Adolescent Mental Health Internship (TAMI) Program - I'm especially proud of our TAMI internship at Rush and with the EMERGE Innova+ions Lab. TAMI is a youth-research training program now in its third year, engaging over 90 high school students across eight schools in Chicagoland. The program has produced two youth-coauthored publications and stands as a rare model of authentic youth-engaged scholarship. Here are manuscripts one and two - both open access.
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Rush to Progress Pilot Award (2025)
Cohn Family Foundation
Rita & Alex Hillman Foundation
Kellogg Foundation
Rush-BMO Institute for Health Equity (RBIHE)
Chicago Chronic Condition Engagement Network (C3EN Pilot Grant; NIMHD P50)
Institute for Translational Medicine (ITM, Pilot Grant, part of the National Institutes of Health/National Center for Advancing Translational Science-funded CTSA program)
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