Early in her career, Dr. Lisako McKyer trained in pediatric clinical psychology specializing in treatment adherence, but the chronically ill children she saw during her doctoral training broke her heart so deeply that she turned to her public health minor for answers.

McKyer was based at an Indianapolis children’s hospital at the time, encountering kids with chronic or terminal diseases. Many were not expected to make it, no matter how well they followed treatment.

“We were losing these young patients, and it broke my heart in a way I can’t describe. When I reflected on my public health training, I thought, if we do everything right in public health, then nothing happens. Children wouldn’t need to be seen for devastating conditions – it would be just primary care,” she said.

“The role of public health in saving lives really resonated with me.”

Caring for one child and one family at a time felt like “spitting on a raging forest fire,”  McKyer recalled.

So she made the professional switch to public health. She started over, undertaking a second PhD program and achieving a master of public health along the way.

“We may not see or personally meet the thousands of children and their families impacted by public health, but if what we do affects their lives in a positive way, then we have done our jobs,” she said.

McKyer was born in Japan and spent her formative years there. Her mother is Japanese and her Black American father was based overseas in the military when the two met and fell in love.

The family moved to Southern California during McKyer’s adolescent years. While she spoke English, it is her second language. Today, her husband of 22 years says that her Japanese accent still comes out when she’s angry or excited.

Graduate school, moving into academia

McKyer completed her graduate education and married her Texan husband in Bloomington, Indiana. When her late mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, the stress of being so far away led the couple and their two children to Texas. McKyer was offered a teaching and research position at Texas A&M University in 2006.

While at A&M, she directed and/or co-led multiple centers, helped to build a center from school-level to system-level status, and was appointed inaugural senior associate dean for the A&M School of Public Health.

She was recruited in 2022 as founding vice dean for faculty affairs and inclusive excellence at the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Arkansas. The school began as a whole health institute and is now expanding into a medical school. For the majority of her career McKyer held joint faculty appointments in public health and imedicine. She says she learned over the last two years that public health is a better fit for her passions.

“One reason why I thoroughly enjoy being in academia goes back to why I chose public health over medicine,” she said.

As a clinician, she was helping one child at a time, but in public health graduate school, where she trains future professionals in the field, she’s able to see the greater reach of her work in “preparing a cadre of like-minded people who will go forth and carry public health practices and solutions to their corner of the world.”

“So I’m not doing it alone,” she said.

McKyer has received a number of national mentoring awards, including the prestigious  American Academy of Health Behavior’s inauguralMentorship Award. She was one of only 10 Black women who were tenured as full professor from among 1,508 female faculty at A&M, where she mentored 33 doctoral students, primarily women of color who have gone on to academic research careers at top U.S. universities.

“It feels so good to see these young women succeed. I feel as proud as if they were my own children,” she said.

Choosing HSC

Coming to HSC was an easy choice for Dr. McKyer.

“I was really impressed with the School of Public Health and the way it is moving forward,” she said.

“Since COVID, people have come to recognize that local health is global health. What happens here impacts the other side of the globe, and what happens everywhere else impacts our community.”

McKyer said she was drawn to HSC because of the importance placed on whole health, and the opportunity to work with a public health dean who “cares deeply about the well-being of faculty, staff, students and community.”

“Also, very few health science centers are led by an inspiring president with the credentials of Dr. Trent-Adams,” she added.

Local connections

Dallas/Fort Worth was an ideal halfway point for McKyer and her husband to stay near their children. Her son studies at Sam Houston State University, and her daughter will be attending junior college on a volleyball scholarship near the Oklahoma/Kansas border, with hopes of transferring to UNT’s volleyball team.

McKyer’s husband attended UTA “back in the day,” she says. He and two of his brothers played on UTA’s last football team in 1985. Her brother-in-law Tim McKyer was recruited to the NFL and now holds three Super Bowl rings, for the  San Francisco 49ers (with well-known teammates Dan Montana, Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott), the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers. Having a football legend in the family inspired Dr. McKyer’s son to also play the game, in the same cornerback position as his uncle.

McKyer’s stepdaughter, or “bonus daughter,” as she call her, lives in Plano, so living in the Metroplex will provide more time for getting together.

Dr. McKyer is also looking forward to setting down roots and getting to know more about the local community.

With the kids grown, the McKyers are empty nesters who now consider their two rescue dogs, Twinkle and Peaches, as the babies of the family.

Scholarly, academic achievements

Dr. McKyer is a recognized population and health disparities expert, with more than 95 peer-review research publications and more than 130 international and national presentations to her credit. Her research is focused on capacity building using community-based participatory approaches to influence social and structural determinants of health, primarily aimed at addressing health inequities.

She has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over $8 million in extramural awards and as co-investigator on an additional $12-plus million in grant funding.

She was named among the 1,000 Inspiring Black Scientists in America in 2020 and is past president and a Fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior.

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