Cohort 1 RETI Fellows
Fellow Biographies
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Mentored Research Project Abstracts
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Assistant Professor
Center for AIDS Intervention Research
Medical College of Wisconsin
Background: Michelle Broaddus's research has been guided by the study of gender roles, how individuals negotiate condom use within relationships, and contexts of sexual risk among high-risk young adults and adolescents. She obtained her Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder in Social Psychology in 2008, focusing on condom attitudes and gender and power in heterosexual relationships. She has published articles examining associations with consistent condom use and the effects of a HIV risk reduction randomized controlled trial among adolescents in detention, detailing gender specific models of condom use intentions and use among adolescents on probation, and perceptions of condom proposers among college students. She completed a NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at CAIR in 2010, and conducted a developmental project on the uses of social media technology, including Short Messaging Service (SMS, also known as “texting”) in sexual relationships among HIV and STD at-risk young adults. After being hired as an assistant professor at CAIR in 2010, Dr. Broaddus’s interests remain focused on the potential for mobile phone technologies in innovative HIV prevention interventions, both as a medium for intervention delivery, and as a tool for at-risk populations to increase safer sex communication.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
Division of Global Public Health
University of California, San Diego
Background: Peter Davidson received his Ph.D. in medical sociology from the University of California, San Francisco in 2009. Dr. Davidson has been conducting research and harm-reduction based intervention development around heroin-related overdose and the transmission of HIV, hepatitis C, and sexually transmitted infections among drug users in Australia and the United States since 1997. Dr. Davidson's dissertation project explored the influence of policing practices on the movements and economic activities of a highly mobile group of homeless younginjecting drug uses in San Francisco, and how these in turn affect the willingness and ability of young injectors to utilize needle exchange services. His work also involves explorations of how injecting drug users and other economically marginalized populations ‘make sense’ of research participation, and the ethical implications of these understandings.
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 Ana Estevez, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Department of Psychology
University of Deusto
Background: Ana Estévez is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Deusto
in Bilbao, Spain. She earned her doctorate in psychology as well as a Master’s degree in clinical and health psychology from the University of Deusto. Her research has focused on depression, intimate partner violence, gambling, and cognitive schemas.
Participated in training only, no Mentored Research Project
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 Jennifer Hettema, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Division of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences
University of Virginia
Background: Jennifer Hettema completed her graduate training in clinical psychology at the University of New Mexico and conducted a clinical internship and two year National Institute on Drug Abuse funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California San Francisco. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with treatment and research interests in the overlap of addictions and health. Much of her research focuses on the intersection of HIV and substance use, including the development and evaluation of prevention and treatment interventions, the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices, and medical education around these issues. Dr. Hettema is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers and incorporates this and other -centered approaches into much of her clinical research and teaching. She is currently the co-investigator under Karen Ingersoll on two HIV intervention trials funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse focusing on increasing medication adherence and decreasing substance use among individual living with HIV. One of these studies is a randomized controlled trial of a 6 session motivational interviewing based intervention and the other involves the development and pilot testing of a two-way text messaging intervention. Dr. Hettema engages in a variety of teaching activities, primarily focusing on helping medical students, residents, and other medical professionals learn to communicate more effectively with patients about health and substance use issues.
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 Kristin Kostick, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Institute for Community Research
Background: Kristin Kostick is a medical anthropologist with expertise in applied prevention/ intervention research, with specific experience in HIV/AIDS prevention and interdisciplinary research methods. She specializes in the design and implementation of culturally-specific and community-based health interventions, including those aimed at reducing sexual risk and promoting psychosocial health and gender equity. She has engaged in training and capacity-building among local non-governmental and community-based organizations in developing countries, particularly among impoverished urban slum communities in India and Mauritius. She has also conducted evaluation research on evidence-based research programs, including Supported Employment rehabilitation services for individuals with severe mental illness in the US, and malaria control interventions in West Africa. Dr. Kostick has experience collaborating with both local and national entities, and coordinating research activities across academic and clinical settings. Her current research focuses on the role of MDMA (ecstasy) –use on sexual risk behaviors among urban young adults, as well as the use of ecstasy to improve intimacy, communication and sexual satisfaction in relationships characterized by significant intimate partner conflicts. In conjunction with her previous work in India, she continues to focus on culturally-based symptom markers that can help to identify women who are in relationships whose dynamics put them at greater risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Dr. Kostick has conducted research in India, Africa, Mauritius and the US.
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Purnima Madhivanan, M.B.B.S., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work
Florida International University
Background: Purnima Madhivanan received her medical degree from Mysore Medical College in India. She served as an HIV physician at the Y.R. Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education in Chennai, India, before going on to earn an MPH and PhD in Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Madhivanan is founder and Executive Director of Public Health Research Institute of India that is recognized by Government of India as a research organization carrying out basic and translational research on women’s health issues in India. She is also the guiding force behind Prerana Women’s Health Initiative which provides voluntary, comprehensive, and culturally sensitive services including HIV/STI management, family planning and cancer screening. Prerana operates a free reproductive health clinic in an urban Mysore slum and mobile antenatal clinics serving 144 rural villages in Mysore Taluk, an area with a large concentration of low-income and farming communities. Dr. Madhivanan has an active research program on prevention of HIV/STIs, primary and secondary prevention of cervical cancer, and domestic violence. She has more than 30 peer-review manuscripts in journals including AIDS, BMJ, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, AIDS & Behavior, Global Public Health, Vaccine, BMC Public Health, and Human Resources for Health. She was the 2007 recipient of the prestigious Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation’s International Leadership Award for her work on prevention of pediatric AIDS in India. Currently, Dr. Madhivanan Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work at FIU. She continues her research and advocacy for HIV infected women in India.
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Research Assistant Professor
Indigenous Wellness Research Institute
University of Washington
Background: Cynthia Pearson directs the Research Methods and Policy Core at the Interdisciplinary Indigenous Wellness Research Institute where she collaborates with indigenous scholars in the development of research policies and directs iterative data analysis on historical and cultural determinants of physical and mental health among American Indians and Alaska Natives. Dr. Pearson expertise is in designing community-based health studies from an ecological perspective that emphasize social, economic, political, environmental, and historical determinants of health. Specifically, Dr. Pearson’s research focuses on the intersecting risk of substance use, historical and lifetime trauma, and HIV risk and how culture, place, and community serve as protective factors. Dr. Pearson meets community members where they are and identifies community ways of knowing and resources to create innovative sustainable interventions. She is involved in several CBPR health and wellness projects across Pacific Northwest tribal communities identifying strengths and protective factors that support young women’s wellness, maternal health, cardiovascular disease, youth academic achievement, and suicide prevention.
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 Elizabeth Reed, M.P.H., Sc.D.
Assistant Professor
Background: Elizabeth Reed is an Assistant Professor at George Washington University School of Public Health in the Department for Prevention and Community Health. Her research has focused on gender-based violence (GBV) and HIV prevention in multiple global settings, with particular attention tothe influence of social, environmental, and structural factors on risk (e.g. economic position, gender inequities and norms, other challenges across individuals’ ‘life contexts’). Given the increasing recognition that such contextual-level factors are contributing significantly to these health burdens and thereby, the need for interventions that aim to alter such structures within communities, Dr. Reed’s research agenda focuses on the development, implementation, and evaluation of structural-level interventions to address GBV and HIV –particularly those that consider both social and economic aspects of women’s lives. Given the contribution of GBV to HIV risk across populations and contexts, her work related to GBV prevention is also central to HIV prevention. Dr. Reed’s recent work in the US has involved investigation of social and environmental contexts in relation to GBV perpetration, as well as the mechanisms explaining the link between such perpetration and STI/HIV risk. Her most recent work abroad has involved the investigation of social and environmental factors (e.g. residential instability, economics, migration/mobility, forced migration) and relation to vulnerability for GBV and HIV risk among women working as sex workers in South India.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
Division of Global Public Health
University of California, San Diego
Background: Lianne Urada is a postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Global Public Health, UCSD Department of Medicine, with a PhD in Social Welfare from UCLA (March, 2011), and a former doctoral training fellow in the Social and Behavioral Determinants of HIV/AIDS Prevention in the Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA School of Public Health. She also worked with persons living with HIV/AIDS for eight years in Los Angeles, California. She served as a Field Education faculty member in Social Welfare at UCLA and holds a California license in clinical social work. For her dissertation, she conducted surveys of 498 female entertainment workers and 48 managers from 54 establishment venues (night clubs/bars, spa/saunas, karaoke bars) in the Philippines. She received grants to assess the socio-structural influences of risk behavior among the entertainers and to develop and evaluate a new intervention. Specifically, she examined factors in the risk environment (at physical, social, economic, and policy levels) and their effects on behavioral outcomes. She used a mixed method, collaborative community-based research approach. She also interviewed 48 key informants (health officials, managers, NGOs) and held focus groups of entertainers prior to administering questionnaires. Dr. Urada wishes to examine the ethics surrounding research with sex workers in the Philippines who are concerned about their legal risks and human rights. The criminal contexts of substance use, sex work, and trafficking often pose perceived risks to participants. Interviews with policymakers, law enforcement, and establishment managers regarding police practices in relation to sex workers and substance users are necessary.
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