Karen Ivantic-Doucette

Health care with a global awareness is a key focus for Karen Ivantic-Doucette. A Clinical Assistant Professor at Marquette College of Nursing, Doucette is also a nurse practitioner with 18 years of expertise with HIV/AIDS. She understands it first-hand from directing a USAID training project for nurses and community health workers in Kenya and Uganda in partnership with the East African Jesuits.

She began treating HIV/AIDS patients in 1986 while a home-care nurse when the epidemic was just beginning. In 1989, she was asked by Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee to create an AIDS task force. The task force gathered monthly to discuss ways and strategies to treat HIV/AIDS patients. As a result of the group's efforts, the Positive Health Clinic at Aurora Sinai Medical Center was created in 1994.

Today, Ivantic-Doucette divides her time between teaching students about HIV and AIDS, working on a project through Marquette to deliver training and medicine to AIDS patients and caregivers in Kenya, and treating HIV patients at the Positive Health Clinic. She also has served as a member of the White House Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS since 2002.