Initially considering a career as an athletic trainer, Dr. Brandy Barnett Holloman began her studies at the University of Mississippi, where she completed a Bachelor of Science in exercise science in 2001 and a Master of Science in health promotion in 2003. During this time, she served as a graduate assistant to the university’s track and field coach and discovered a deeper interest in the fields of health education and public health. In 2003, she joined the Boys & Girls Club of Northwest Georgia as the grant coordinator and program director before becoming a public health educator with Cobb & Douglas Public Health from 2005 to 2011. From 2011 to 2019, she was a project manager for the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power and Potential (GCAPP) and also served as a training department manager from 2017 to 2019. Dr. Holloman concurrently worked with ETR as a senior research consultant from 2016 to 2017 and a training consultant from 2016 to 2019.
Dr. Holloman established Barnett Health Consulting, LLC in 2019 and additionally spent time as a research associate with the Georgia Health Policy Center from 2019 to 2020. Alongside her work with Barnett Health Consulting, she proffered her expertise to a number of other institutions between 2020 and 2022, including Auburn University and Tulane University, where she was a guest lecturer, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she has spent time as a health communications and education specialist, vaccine confidence technical assistance lead and an instructional designer. Furthermore, in 2021, Dr. Holloman completed a doctorate in health education at A.T. Still University, a course of study she began in 2014 after achieving certification as a health education specialist from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc.
Holding considerable expertise in adolescent health education, Dr. Holloman provides a range of services to various education and medical institutions through Barnett Health Consulting, striving to ensure equitable access to health education. As a consultant, she works with health professionals to design programs in adolescent health, youth development, and sexual and reproductive health and offers evaluation, training and technical assistance services as well. For medical institutions in particular, she emphasizes an understanding of social and health equity issues that may prevent young people from seeking medical advice or attention. Similarly, Dr. Holloman works with schools to help establish ongoing, evidence-based sex education programs.
Since 2022, Dr. Holloman has also served as an adjunct professor at Kent State University and California Baptist University. During the 2022-2023 academic year, she taught Introduction to Public Health at California Baptist and Essentials to Public Health and Ethics in Health at Kent State. In both roles, her duties encompassed facilitating discussions, providing weekly lectures, reviewing coursework, and various other administrative tasks associated with teaching. She also remains involved with the CDC as a contractor and hopes to have the opportunity to join the CDC full-time as part of the Division of Adolescent and School Health. As she looks toward the future, Dr. Holloman intends to further her work in higher education and pursue a position as a professor of public health.
Attributing much of her success to her passion, internal motivation and resilience, Dr. Holloman also credits her ability to grow and learn from her failures and mistakes. She considers her greatest professional achievement to be providing training and technical assistance to professionals who help guide young people in making healthy decisions. Dedicated to civic advocacy as well, she contributes her expertise to Black Ladies in Public Health as a public health ambassador and to Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated as a health subject matter expert and member of the health program committee. When she isn’t working, Dr. Holloman enjoys traveling, fine dining experiences and spending time with her family.
For her excellence, Dr. Holloman has been the recipient of several honors and accolades over the course of her career. During her time with GCAPP, she was twice named Employee of the Quarter, first in 2012 and again in 2017. The following year, she was named Sex Educator of the Week by the Center for Family Life Education and was featured in “How I Got Into Sex Ed,” a publication of the Center for Sexuality Education, in 2014. More recently, Dr. Holloman received a Certificate of Academic Excellence from A.T. Still University in 2021.
