HPS Global Health Faculty Candidate Presentation: HIV & Public Health Expert Dr. Thespina Yamanis

Health Promotion Sciences Global Health Faculty Candidate Presentation | University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health

PRESENTER: Thespina Yamanis, PhD, MPH | Assistant professor in the School of International Service, and affiliate faculty of the Center on Health, Risk and Society at American University in Washington, DC.
TOPIC: “Advancing Global Health Equity through Interdisciplinary, Community-Engaged Research”

Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018
Noon - 1 p.m.
Drachman Hall, Room A116

About the Presenter:
Dr. Yamanis’ scholarship uses interdisciplinary methods to identify social and structural determinants of health disparities and to design community-based, multi-level interventions. Her expertise is in the prevention of HIV and intimate partner violence among youth in Sub-Saharan Africa and among sexual/gender minority Latinx immigrants in the U.S.  She has published her research in prestigious journals including AIDS and Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, PLOS NTDs, LGBT Health, and Global Public Health. She is an active member of the NIH-funded District of Columbia’s Center for AIDS Research. Dr. Yamanis teaches a global health survey course at the undergraduate level and program planning and immigrant health at the Master's level. She often involves students in her research, and has co-authored published articles with students across levels. Dr. Yamanis currently is principal investigator on an R21 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a pilot social network intervention for adolescent girls in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In 2017, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation selected her for their Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program to examine resilience and health among immigrant Latinx living in distinct policy environments.

Abstract:
This presentation will describe two areas of research. Her first line of research focuses on how social networks influence the adoption and diffusion of HIV-related norms and behaviors among young men in Tanzania. She will share results from a cluster randomized controlled HIV prevention trial with men’s networks in Dar es Salaam, as well as how she currently is using a social network approach to reach at-risk, out-of-school adolescent girls in Tanzania for HIV and intimate partner violence prevention. Her second line of research focuses on the relationship between fear of deportation, documentation status, HIV-related outcomes and mental health among Latino immigrants in Washington, D.C. In qualitative and quantitative studies, she found that legal asylum reduced HIV risk and protected against poor mental health Latinx immigrant sexual and gender minorities. Building on this work, she will share her pilot research on an innovative medical-legal partnership to improve health for Latinx sexual and gender minorities.

For more information, please contact Lourdes Heslep, (520) 626-6317, heslepl@email.arizona.edu