Evans F. Kyei, PhD, MSc., RN, is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Division of Nursing and Health Advancement at the Capstone College of Nursing, University of Alabama. A nurse scientist, health policy scholar, and registered nurse licensed in Alabama and Massachusetts, he has spent more than a decade in clinical practice and research committed to one purpose: ensuring that older adults in rural and underserved communities are not failed by the federal systems designed to protect them.
Dr. Kyei began his nursing career in Ghana, where he served as a Senior Nurse Manager with the Ghana Health Service. After completing his doctorate in nursing and health policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, he worked directly with older adults in rural Alabama, where he witnessed firsthand the distance between what federal aging policy promises and what rural communities receive. That experience shaped everything that followed.
His research program is built on that gap. Dr. Kyei has published peer-reviewed policy analyses of six major federal aging statutes including the Older Americans Act, Medicare, the RAISE Family Caregivers Act, the WISH Act, Housing First, and PACE, in journals including Nursing Outlook, Policy Politics and Nursing Practice, and the Journal of Advanced Nursing. His qualitative work, including a Collaborative Arts Research Initiative Faculty Fellowship examining aging, resilience, and mental health among older adults in rural Alabama, brings community voices directly into his policy scholarship. Across more than 43 peer-reviewed publications, his findings point to the same conclusion: the gaps in aging policy lie in implementation, equity-focused funding, and the integration of nursing expertise at the level of policy design.
Dr. Kyei is the recipient of a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs research award to lead the CONNECT study, a community-based social prescribing initiative addressing health and social isolation among rural older veterans, and a National Institutes of Health award through the Deep South Resource Center for Minority Aging Research supporting community-engaged research on social connectedness among rural older adults. He has been further recognized through selection to the Journal of Advanced Nursing Early Career Research Board as one of fifteen early-career nurse scientists globally, the Society of Behavioral Medicine Aging Special Interest Group Health Equity in Aging Award, and the Harvard Kennedy School Rappaport Public Policy Fellowship. He serves as Associate Editor of the Substance Use and Addiction Journal and peer reviewer for more than 27 journals.
