PhD, MPH, MPA, CHES®
Assistant Professor of Nursing
John L. and Helen Kellogg Endowed Faculty Scholar
Rush University College of Nursing
Interpersonal Violence Prevention | Mental Health | Biopsychosocial Stress and Resilience
My name is Chuka Nestor Emezue (pronounced Choo‑Kah • A‑May‑Zu‑Way). I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Women, Children, and Family Nursing at Rush University College of Nursing and the John L. and Helen Kellogg Endowed Faculty Scholar. I trained in nursing science, public health, and public policy, earning a PhD in Nursing Science, a Master of Public Health, and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Missouri. I first studied Biochemistry in Nigeria.
My work is inspired by Frederick Douglass’s astute quote:
My research sits at the intersection of violence prevention, youth mental health, and community health. I use digital tools, community partnerships, and behavioral science to understand how harm develops and how it can be prevented earlier.
I began by working with women and girls who had survived gender-based and partner violence. That work made something clear: responding after harm occurs matters, but it is not enough. I gradually shifted toward prevention, studying the behaviors, relationships, and environments that shape violence within families. This included working with boys, young men, and fathers, whose actions profoundly influence the safety and well-being of partners, families, and children.
Changing deeply ingrained adult behavior is difficult. Prevention has to start earlier.
My work now focuses largely on adolescents and young adults, especially youth navigating community violence, justice involvement, and structural disadvantage. The aim is to reach young people before crises occur, not only after they appear in emergency rooms, courtrooms, or worse.
Together with youth partners, their families, school, and community health centers, I co-design technology-enhanced and community-based interventions. Young people help shape these interventions, ensuring they feel usable and relevant rather than imposed. Technology is not a shortcut, but it allows support to exist outside clinics and offices, in the spaces where young people and their families actually live their lives. The work has been instructive. When done well, they provide a direct and often radical way to reach those least likely to engage with traditional services.
Society and biology are intricately linked and jointly determine behavioral tendencies across the lifespan. More recently, I have been interested in how experience “gets under the skin.” Chronic adversity, including poverty, racism, food insecurity, and neighborhood violence, affects stress response systems and coping patterns over time. My research examines how these biological changes interact with social environments, and how supportive relationships and resources can buffer their effects.
Ultimately, my goal is to prevent harm earlier, support families more effectively, and translate research into practical tools communities can use.
CURRENT PROJECTS
An intervention in your pocket. BrotherlyACT is an app and web-based program that provides short life-skills videos, coping and mental health support, and practical safety planning tools for adolescents and young adults living in high-violence, under-resourced communities. The goal is to offer help before a crisis, not only after one. You can download the app through the App Store or Google Play. The current version requires an access code, so please email me and I will send one.
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FatherlyACT (in development) is a trauma-informed father–child dyadic program to strengthen relationships and reduce the intergenerational impacts of domestic violence on children and families. It focuses on supporting fathers in building safe, consistent, and emotionally responsive connections with their children. More details are forthcoming, but the work is actively underway.
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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, that has engaged more than 90 high school students across eight Chicagoland schools. Students learn how research works, contribute to ongoing projects, and help shape questions that matter to their communities. The program has already led to two youth co-authored publications - one and two - both open access, and reflects a model of genuinely youth-engaged scholarship.
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Cohn Family Foundation
Rita & Alex Hillman Foundation
Kellogg Foundation
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)
Rush to Progress Pilot Award
Rush-BMO Institute for Health Equity (RBIHE)
