Dr. Belcourt (Otter Woman) is an American Indian Associate Professor in the College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Montana’s Pharmacy Practice and School of Public and Community Health Sciences Departments. She is an enrolled tribal member of the Three Affiliated Tribes, Mandan, Hidatsa, Blackfeet, and Chippewa descent. She completed her clinical training and doctoral studies in clinical psychology with advanced postdoctoral science training completed at the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health at the University of Colorado at Denver. Dr. Belcourt has worked with American Indian and Alaska Native communities in community-based participatory research for 18 years. She has worked clinically with a variety of diverse populations diverse populations, including combat veterans, Native Americans, and low-income populations specializing in post-traumatic stress reactions and multiple psychiatric conditions. However, primarily she has worked as an indigenous researcher examining domains of mental, physical, environmental, and public health for indigenous populations. She has served as an author on many peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and presented at local, regional, national, and international venues. She was selected as a JPB Environmental Public Health Fellow directed by the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health. Her work in environmental public health has focused on working with tribal communities to create intervention methods grounded in traditional ecological knowledge and practices. These collaborative methods have included the use of video based educational efforts that incorporate traditional knowledge in meaningful ways. Her research priorities include promoting health equity through engaged community-based science in indigenous mental, physical, environmental and physical health. She has worked in mixed methodological analytic research teams at the University of Montana, University of Colorado at Denver, and the University of Washington using both qualitative, quantitative, social, and biomedical approaches to advance indigenous scientific knowledge.

She currently teaches American Indian public health courses at The University of Montana’s School of Pharmacy and Public Health. She serves as a co-lead investigator of a 5-year NIH RO1 intervention grants aimed at improving indoor air quality within both Native and non-Native homes that rely upon wood stoves for heating. She has developed community based participatory efforts with communities using ethnographic digital storytelling and culturally grounded analytic techniques to advance effective scientific knowledge to indigenous communities. She is currently working to adapt evidence based narrative exposure trauma therapies for patients experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. Community collaborators include tribal communities in Montana, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, and Alaska. Dr. Belcourt serves as a Faculty Senator for the University of Montana, reviewer for the National Institute of Health, and as a former Ford Fellow she has served as the chair of  the Ford Foundation Psychology Fellowship review panel guided by the National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Blackfeet Nation Institutional Review Board.

She graduated from Browning High School on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and has three daughters.