Dr. Jolie Crowder, PhD, RN, MSN, CCM, serves as the National Elder Care Consultant for the Division of Clinical and Community Services (DCCS), at the Indian Health Service (IHS) Headquarters. In this role, she serves as the principal representative responsible for planning, formulating, and implementing national elder care policies and programming. These programs focus on early recognition, diagnosis, and management of dementia and Alzheimer’s. Additional responsibilities include representing the DCCS in elder program forward-facing outreach activities and monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the elder care program.

Before joining the IHS, she worked for more than a decade with the International Association for Indigenous Aging as a senior director and director of Research and Evaluation. She worked briefly with the National Council for Urban Indian Health. She served as principal investigator for a National Healthy Brain Initiative award and lead evaluator for 4 tribal Administration for Community Living Alzheimer’s grants. In addition, Jolie has hands-on experience developing plain language and culturally relevant resources for use by and for Indian Country. She has published peer- reviewed publications on elder abuse, dementia, and social determinants of cancer in American Indian and Alaska Native populations working in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

She graduated with a master’s in health systems management and a doctorate in nursing science from the University of Virginia. Her doctoral dissertation focused on elder mistreatment in Native populations.