Kurth completed her bachelor's degree at Princeton University where she specialised in African and Developmental Studies and completed in 1984. She completed a Master of Public Health at Columbia University, graduating in 1987. She joined Yale School of Nursing where she earned a Master of Science in Nursing in 1990. She was certified a midwife in 1990. She joined the University of Washington for her doctoral studies, gaining a PhD in epidemiology in 1998. In 1993 she published her doctoral research in a book - Until the Cure: Caring for Women with HIV - one of the first textbooks that described HIV in women. The book considers the ethical issues, including the reproductive rights of women with HIV, and legal conflicts. She worked as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow working in the Centre for Aids in Seattle between 2000 and 2003.
Career
In 2003 Kurth was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing. In 2008 she joined New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing as a Professor. She was made Executive Director of the New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing in 2011. She was the founder and executive director of NYUCN Global, which researches and implements programs to improve the health of families in the United States. She was awarded a $4.1 million National Institutes of Health grant to support a five-year proposal Test and Linkage to Care Kenya, which looked at HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa. This proposal has continued for several years, studying the prevalence of HIV in different communities. They are looking to pilot a SMART intervention to link HIV-positive women youth for treatment, including oral fluid self-testing, staff-aided testing and standard provider testing to determine a population's preference for HIV testing. They use reminder SMS messages and financial incentives to link to care. She has consulted for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNAIDS, United States Agency for International Development and the National Institutes of Health. She was made a fellow of the Institute Of Medicine in 2013. She was a member of the American Academy of Nursing Ebola Task Force between 2014 and 2015. She was appointed Dean of the Yale School of Nursing in Jan 2016. She was the inaugural Linda Koch Lorimer Professor of Nursing. She is a member of the United States Preventive Services Task Force. She was selected as Nurse of the Week by Daily Nurse in 2016. She voiced concern on possible repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and joined a coalition of deans to write a letter to leaders in D.C. She has reviewed the planetary health framework by monitoring how population displacement and disease patterns impact health. They developed CARE, Computer Assisted Risk Education, an automated counselling and planning tool to improve health outcomes. In 2018 she was made the Chair of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.
