Public Health, Research, and
Law Enforcement:
The Case of HIV/AIDS Prevention
CIRA Law, Policy and Ethics Mini-Conference
List of Participants
Participant Biographies
List of Participants
Kim Blankenship, Ph.D.,
Associate Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale
University
Leo Beletsky,
Department of Community Health, Brown University
Scott Burris, J.D.,
James E. Beasley Professor of Law, Temple University, Beasley School of
Law
Patricia Case, M.P.H., ScD,
Assistant Professor, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Jonathan Cohen,
Researcher, HIV/AIDS & Human Rights Program, Human Rights Watch
Hannah Cooper, Sc.D.,
Post-Doctoral Fellow, National Development and Research Institutes
Anna Dolinsky, Research
Assistant, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale University
Thena Durham, M.S.,
Deputy Director for Policy, National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention,
CDC
Jeffrey Fagan, Ph.D.,
Professor of Law and Public Health, Columbia University Law School
T. Stephen Jones, M.D.,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Cliff Karchmer,
Police Executive Research Forum
Yasmina Katsulis, Ph.D., NIMH Post Doctoral
Fellow, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale University
Stephen Koester, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado
at Denver
Alex Kral, Ph.D.,
Director, Urban Health Studies, Assistant Adjuct Professor, Dept of Family
and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
Mike Lawlor, J.D.,
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, University of New Haven
Zita Lazzarini, J.D., M.P.H., Director, Division
of Medical Humanities, Health, Law and Ethics
University of Connecticut Health Center
Danni Lentine, M.P.H.,
Public Health Analyst, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention - IRS Centers for
Disease Control & Prevention
Cynthia Lum, Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor, Northeastern University College of Criminal Justice
Susan W. McCampbell, M.R.P.,
President, Center for Innovative Public Policies, Inc.
Leif Mitchell,
Coordinator, Community Research Core, Center for Interdisciplinary Research
on AIDS, Yale University
Peter Moskos,
Department of Sociology, Harvard University
Sonja Plesset, Ph.D.,
NIMH Post Doctoral Fellow, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS,
Yale University
Prabhu Ponkshe,
Director of Communications, Substance Abuse Policy Research Program
Jerry Ratcliffe, Ph.D., F.R.G.S.,
Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, Temple University
Susan Gail Sherman, Ph.D.,
Assistant Research Professor, Department of Epidemiology, The John Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Kathleen Sikkema, Ph.D.,
Director, Community Research Core, Center for Interdisciplinary Research
on AIDS, Yale University
Amy Smoyer, M.S.W., M.P.A.,
Research Associate, Law, Policy, and Ethics Core, Center for Interdisciplinary
Research on AIDS, Yale University
Jon S. Vernick, J.D., M.P.H.,
Associate Professor and Co-Director, The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy
and Research, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Participant Biographies
Kim
Blankenship is an Associate Research Scientist, in
Epidemiology & Public Health and The Institution for Social and Policy
Studies, and the Associate Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Research
on AIDS at Yale University. A sociologist, Dr. Blankenship's research and
publications have focused on race, class, and gender analyses of law, public
policy, and, more recently, health. Her HIV-related research has focused
on the social context of risk-taking among women and drug users and its
implications for HIV prevention policy, as well as on developing a systematic
approach to identifying and assessing structural interventions in public
health generally and HIV in particular. Between 1991 and 1997 she conducted
fieldwork among and, more recently, life history interviews with female
sex workers in New Haven to understand better the factors (especially the
social structural and contextual factors) that shape their drug-use and
sexual behaviors. She is currently preparing a book manuscript based on
these materials. She has also been conducting research on structural interventions
for reducing HIV incidence in drug users and communities of color. In particular,
her research focuses on the relationships among drug and social welfare
policy, incarceration and policing, and race disparities in HIV. Her work
has been supported by grants from the CDC and NIMH.
Leo Beletsky's academic interests span the fields of public health, law, communications,
and public policy. In particular, his research is focused on improving information
exchange, information design, and the application of the social marketing
approach in the context of public policy implementation. As part of his
work on a study to evaluate the impact of syringe deregulation in Rhode
Island, he is currently designing an ethnographic investigation into how
policy change affects the work of police departments across the state. A
graduate of Vassar College and Oxford University with a degree in geography,
he has worked on several projects addressing information needs in public
health, including initiatives at Harvard Medical School's Decision Systems
Group, the New York Public Library's Center for Cyberhealth Literacy, and
the New York Academy of Medicine's Center for the Advancement of Collaborative
Strategies in Health. Currently, he is finishing his Masters in Public Health
at the Brown University Medical School, where he has worked under the direction
of Grace Macalino on IDU harm reduction research. He will be pursuing a
JD starting in the fall of 2005.
Scott Burris is the James E. Beasley Professor of Law at the Beasley School of Law of
Temple University, and Associate Director of the Center for Law and the
Public's Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
He was the editor of the first systematic legal analysis of HIV in the United
States, "AIDS and the Law: A Guide for the Public" (Yale University
Press, 1987). His current research focuses on how law influences public
health and health behavior. His work has been supported by major health
organizations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National
Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He has served as a consultant on public health law with organizations ranging
from the United Nations Development Programme and the American Psychological
Association to the Institute of Medicine and the producers of the Oscar-winning
film "Philadelphia." As an attorney and Board member of the American
Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, he has represented people with HIV
facing discrimination from employers, service providers and the government.
Burris is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and the Yale
Law School.
Jonathan Cohen is a researcher with the HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program at Human Rights
Watch. His work focuses on documenting human rights abuses linked to the
global HIV/AIDS epidemic, such as violence and discrimination against AIDS-affected
children, abuses against groups at high risk of HIV infection, and policies
related to access to AIDS treatment. He is the author most recently of "Injecting
Reason: Human Rights and HIV Prevention for Injection Drug Users,"
a case study of syringe access law in California. A Canadian-trained lawyer,
Mr. Cohen served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada prior to
joining Human Rights Watch.
Hannah Cooper is currently a NIDA post-doctoral fellow at the National Development and
Research Institutes. Her work focuses on harm reduction, racial/ethnic disparities
in injection drug use, and the effects of particular police strategies on
drug injectors' capacity to reduce the harm of their drug use and on community
well-being.
Anna Dolinsky is a research assistant at CIRA. She graduated from Yale University
in May 2003 with a B.A. in History. Anna is working on several projects
for the Law, Policy and Ethics Corethe Law, including a study on racial
disparities in media depictions of drug users. She is also part of a working
group on children orphaned and made vulnerable by AIDS.
Thena Durham received a B.S. in microbiology in 1966 from Fisk University (magna cum
laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and an M.S. in developmental biology in 1968 from
Purdue University. She began her career at the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) in 1968 as a research microbiologist and served in
a wide variety of laboratory assignments in the communicable diseases organization
that evolved into the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID). From
1986-1988, Ms. Durham served as a senior program analyst in the Office of
the Director, Center for Health Promotion and Education, and from 1988-1996,
she served as Associate Director for Program in the Office of the Director,
National Center for Prevention Services. From 1996-2001, she served as the
Director of the Executive Secretariat, CDC and ATSDR. Currently, Ms. Durham
serves as Deputy Director for Policy of the National Center for HIV, STD
and TB Prevention (NCHSTP) at CDC.
Jeffrey Fagan is a Professor of Law and Public Health at Columbia University. His current
research examines the concentration of incarceration in New York City neighborhoods,
jurisprudence and legal policy toward adolescent crime, error rates in capital
punishment, and therapeutic jurisprudence in "problem solving"
courts. He currently chairs the National Policy Committee of the American
Society of Criminology. He is a member of the Committee on Law and Justice
of the National Research Council, and the MacArthur Foundation Research
Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. He is a Fellow of
the American Society of Criminology.
T. Stephen Jones retired from the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps in June 2003.
He currently is an ORISE research fellow working with the Division of HIV/AIDS
Prevention - Intervention Research and Support (DHA-IRS) of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Previously, he was the Associate
Director for HIV Prevention among Drug Users for the DHA-IRS, CDC and the
DHAP-IRS Associate Director for Science from 1997 to 2002. He has worked
on HIV prevention related to drug injection since 1987; with major interests
in HIV serologic studies of injection drug users (IDUs), HIV counseling
and testing in drug treatment programs, evaluation of syringe exchange program,
increasing the availability to IDUs of sterile injection equipment, safe
disposal of used syringes, and integration of viral hepatitis prevention
into public health programs. From 1979 to 1987 he worked on CDC international
health programs promoting childhood immunization in Latin America and child
survival programs in Africa. He participated in the World Health Organization's
smallpox eradication programs in India, Bangladesh, and Somalia. He lives
in Amherst Massachusetts and is married to Adele Franks with a 14-year-old
daughter, Sara.
Yasmina
Katsulis is a medical anthropologist and specialist
in gender, sexuality, and the political economy of health. Her post-doctoral
research focuses on structural risk for HIV/AIDS and HIV prevention interventions
in the criminal justice setting. She is currently pursuing the possibility
of including HIV interventions within domestic violence curricula currently
provided to male offenders as an alternative to incarceration. Dr. Katsulis
received a doctoral degree in anthropology (2003) with an emphasis in medical
anthropology and public health from Yale University. She is also a certified
HIV prevention and testing counselor, and has engaged in street outreach
among male, female, and transgender sex workers, homeless youth, and those
struggling with drug addiction. Her previous research focused on the sex
industry in Tijuana, Mexico, and included over 300 interviews with sex workers,
clients, community health advocates, and public officials.
Stephen Koester is an associate professor of Anthropology and a faculty member in the doctoral
program in Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado
at Denver. Since 1989, Koester has been working with injection drug users
and conducting research on the contextual factors that influence HIV risk
behaviors. In 1994, he published an article showing how the Colorado paraphernalia
statute and policing strategies combined to increase HIV risk practices
among injection drug users in Denver. Koester recently concluded a National
Institute of Health funded HIV intervention study that focused on drug injection
networks and the environmental factors influencing network members' behavior.
In 2001-2002, Koester was a visiting Senior Behavioral Scientist in the
Division of Viral Hepatitis at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
and in 2003 he began working on HIV and drug use in Bangladesh. In addition
to working with injection drug users to reduce blood borne disease transmission,
Koester has maintained an active interest in political ecology and occasionally
consults on environmental issues in the Caribbean. In 1995 he was a Fulbright
Research Scholar in St. Lucia. Steve Koester was awarded the University
of Colorado at Denver's Researcher of the Year award for 2003.
Alex Kral is Director of Urban Health Studies and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology
in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of
California, San Francisco. Dr. Kral received his Masters degree at Harvard
School of Public Health and PhD at University of California, Berkeley, both
in epidemiology. Over the past decade, Dr Kral has focused his research
on infectious disease epidemiology and the effects of health-related policies
on injection drug users (IDUs), crack cocaine smokers, and the urban poor.
He is currently Principal Investigator of 5 studies, including a NIDA-funded
study evaluating the impact of an integrated health care center on the health
of IDUs, a HRSA-funded study on the adherence of HIV medications among HIV
positive urban poor, a California State-funded study of HIV among Latino
day laborers and seasonal migrant workers, and two studies (NIDA and CDC
funded) evaluating the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs among
IDUs in California. Much of his work has documented the negative impact
that laws and law enforcement have on the health of drug users. Dr. Kral
has authored or co-authored over 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals including
the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, American Journal of Epidemiology,
American Journal of Public Health, AIDS, JAIDS, and the International Journal
of Drug Policy.
Mike Lawlor is serving his ninth term as a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives.
He represents the 99th district, which is comprised of the town of East
Haven. In the legislature, Mike has been recognized for his work reforming
Connecticut's criminal justice system. Mike graduated as an Honors Scholar
in Slavic and Eastern European Studies from the University of Connecticut
in 1979. He earned a Masters Degree in Soviet Area Studies from the University
of London in 1981 and he graduated from the George Washington University
School of Law in 1983. Following law school Mike was appointed as a prosecutor
in the State Attorney's Office in New Haven, where he served until his election
to the legislature in 1986. Mike is currently an assistant professor of
criminal justice at the University of New Haven and is Counsel to Giordano
Associates, Inc., Public Insurance Adjusters in East Haven, CT. Mike is
serving as Chair of the House Judiciary Committee and as a member of the
Government Administration and Elections Committee and the Executive and
Legislative Nominations Committee. He is active in both the National Conference
of State Legislators and the Council of State Governments. He is a chair
of the Criminal Justice / Mental Health Consensus Project. He is an Associate
with the State Sentencing and Corrections Program at the Vera Institute
of Justice in New York City and a member of the National Resource Committee
for the Center for Sex Offender Management within the U.S. Department of
Justice. Mike serves on the national drafting team for the Interstate Compact
for Adult Offender Supervision and the Interstate Compact for Juvenile Probation
and Parole. Mike has been a featured speaker at numerous national criminal
justice conferences and has been honored for his legislative service by
the Connecticut Coalition of Police and Corrections Officers and by the
Connecticut Police Chief's Association. The New Haven County Order of Centurions,
an Italian-American Police organization, has recently honored Mike for his
many years of support for those in law enforcement.
Zita Lazzarini teaches health law and bioethics at the University of Connecticut Health
Center and the Harvard School of Public Health and directs the Division
of Medical Humanities at the University of Connecticut Health Center. She
is currently developing projects and methods to evaluate the impact of laws
and policies on health and behavior using a social epidemiology framework.
This work includes examination of criminal law and HIV risk behavior, as
well as other aspects of HIV law and policy. She is also currently investigating
human subjects research protection as a regulatory system. Ms. Lazzarini
has co-authored Human Rights and Public Health in the AIDS Pandemic, published
by Oxford University Press in 1997. Her work has appeared in Journal of
the American Medical Association (JAMA), the American Journal of Public
Health (AJPH), the Columbia Law Review, Emory Law Review, the Journal of
Law, Medicine, and Ethics, the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice,
AIDS Law and Policy, Health and Human Rights, and other medical and legal
journals. She is a member of the Institutional Review Board (Human Subjects
Research Committee) at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC),
Chair of the clinical ethics committee at UCHC, and a member of the clinical
ethics committee at Hartford Hospital. She serves as a Special Consultant
for the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Johns Hopkins University,
the Georgetown-Johns Hopkins Program on Law and Public Health, and for the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has worked with the World
Health Organization on projects involving HIV-related legislation, employment
policies, and human rights. Ms. Lazzarini's areas of recent research include
public health law, privacy and confidentiality, human subjects regulation,
HIV prevention among pregnant women and injection drug users, and health
and human rights. She does local and statewide work on bioethics and HIV
prevention. She lives in western Massachusetts with her three boys, Ariel
(14 years old), Lucca (10 years), and Salem (6).
Danni Lentine has a master's degree in public health from Emory University in behavioral
science, and an undergraduate degree in psychology from Oakland University
in Michigan. She has 9 years of experience in public health, most of which
is related to HIV prevention and substance use. Danni began her career as
an undergraduate, where she assisted in developing and managing an innovative
HIV-prevention needs assessment of incarcerated female commercial sex workers,
funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Danni served
as the Executive Director of a struggling non-profit organization that provides
services to drug users in Atlanta. In this role, she stabilized and grew
the organization financially and functionally. Currently, Danni works at
CDC in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. Her work focuses on blood-borne
pathogen prevention for drug users, particularly injection drug users.
Cynthia Lum is an Assistant Professor in the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern
University in Boston. She holds a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University
of Maryland, a MSc in Criminology from the London School of Economics and
a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from UCLA. Dr. Lum has consulted
and researched with a number of law enforcement agencies in California,
Maryland, Washington D.C., New York and London in police deployment strategies
and tactics, crime analysis, information technology and officer training.
She currently is a visiting lecturer for the U.S. Department of State's
International Law Enforcement Academy in Roswell, New Mexico, where she
teaches police deployment strategies to command level personnel from police
agencies in developing democracies. Dr. Lum was also a police officer and
detective for the Baltimore City Police Department where she specialized
in sexual child abuse investigations. Currently, she is the project director
of a large Department of Justice grant that studies the longitudinal development
of crime at places using innovative methodological approaches. Her research
specialties include drugs and violence, American and international policing,
spatial statistical analysis of crime patterns, and evaluation research
in criminology.
Susan McCampbell is President of the Center for Innovative Public Policies, Inc., (CIPP)
a not-for-profit company specializing in public policy consulting, established
in 1999. From 1999 - 2002, CIPP had a contract with the Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation for a project entitled "Needle-Exchange Programs:
Getting Out the Facts and Promoting Collaboration Between Law Enforcement
and Public Health." Its goals were to improve knowledge and communication
between the two communities - public health and public safety regarding
needle-exchange programs. The efforts produced several publications for
law enforcement-related magazines as well as presentations at national policing
conferences (see http://www.cipp.org/needle/index.html). CIPP currently
has several cooperative agreements with the U. S. Department of Justice's
National Institute of Corrections (NIC): to develop curriculum to effectively
manage a multi-generational workforce; to provide technical assistance to
state and local correctional agencies regarding the issues associated with
staff sexual misconduct with inmates; and to develop a bulletin on gender
responsive jail operations for the administrators of small and medium sized
jails. Prior to founding CIPP in 1999, Ms. McCampbell was the Director of
the Department of Corrections, Broward County, Florida, Sheriff's Office
for 4 years. During this time, Ms. McCampbell oversaw the daily operations
of a jail system with 4,200 inmates, three facilities, a staff of 1,600,
and a budget of $110 million. During her tenure, the agency received their
initial accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections,
and re-accreditation, the largest agency of its kind to receive simultaneous
accreditation for all facilities. Other highlights of her term as Director
include implementation of an objective inmate classification system, dramatic
improvements in the management and treatment of inmates with a diagnosis
of mental illness in the jail system, the planning for a new 1,000 bed men's
direct supervision facility, and a 1,000 bed women's jail. While with the
Broward Sheriff's Office, Ms. McCampbell served as Chief Deputy/Acting Sheriff
for 6 months following the death of the Sheriff. Prior to coming to Broward
County, Ms. McCampbell was Assistant Sheriff for the City of Alexandria,
Virginia, Sheriff's Office for 11 years, a Program Director for Police Executive
Research Forum in Washington, D. C., and a regional criminal justice planner
in Northern Virginia. Ms. McCampbell holds a BA in Political Science from
the School of Government and Public Administration, The American University,
Washington, D. C., and a Master's Degree in City and Regional Planning from
the School of Architecture and Engineering of The Catholic University of
America, Washington, D.C.
Leif
Mitchell is the Community Research Core Coordinator
at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University.
He is the former Community Co-Chair and current advisor to Connecticut's
HIV Prevention Community Planning Group and the Co-Chair of the Strategic
Planning Committee for the Title 1 Ryan White Planning Council for New Haven
and Fairfield County. Mr. Mitchell received a BA in Political Science and
Psychology from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Prior to coming to CIRA,
he was a Sexuality Educator/Trainer for Planned Parenthood of Connecticut,
an administrator for the Stonewall Community Foundation in New York City,
and the Gay Youth Educator for AIDS Volunteers of Cincinnati. In 1999 Mr.
Mitchell received the "Sexuality Educator of the Year" award from
the CT Chapter of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the
United States (SIECUS). Mr. Mitchell is the Co-chair of the Connecticut
chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a member
of the GLSEN National Board of Directors, and a National Trainer for GLSEN's
Trainer of Trainers Initiative. He has compiled, edited and published a
resource module for educators, Tackling Gay Issues in School, which has
been distributed internationally. Leif has a chapter in Out on Fraternity
Row: Personal Accounts of Being Gay in a College Fraternity that captures
his experience as an out member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity.
Peter Moskos received his BA from Princeton (1994) and is currently pursuing a PhD at
Harvard University. As a Baltimore City police officer (1999 - 2001), he
patrolled Baltimore's high-crime and high-drug Eastern District. His research
focuses on police-specific variables linking drug prohibition to high-levels
of African-American imprisonment. Factors unique to high-crime "ghettos"
create a drug-centered and arrest-based police culture. Police officers'
work style and desire for court overtime pay affect arrest-decision more
than any suspect-based variables. Peter has spoken to Harlem (New York)
Police Precincts on the Expanded Syringe Access Demonstration Program (ESAP).
Peter lives in New York City and is on the job market. He is interested
in continuing police-related research, focusing on race, culture, and urban
crime-prevention strategies.
Sonja
Plesset received her doctorate in anthropology from
Harvard University in 2002. Her dissertation research focused on interpartner
violence and the transformation of gender relations in northern Italy. She
is currently working on a book manuscript based on that research. As an
NIMH Post-doctoral Fellow at CIRA, Sonja has been working with Dr. Kim Blankenship
on a project that addresses the impact of incarceration, policing, and eviction
on families and communities, and examines how drug policy and enforcement
contribute to race-based disparities in HIV/AIDS. In addition to participating
in postdoctoral seminars and general research activities, Sonja is also
developing a pilot project on HIV prevention to be carried out in a HOPE
VI public housing program in New Haven, CT. The project will examine the
relationship between eviction and risky drug and sexual practices within
a newly established HOPE VI public housing community. If strong connections
are found between eviction and HIV-related risk behaviors, the pilot data
will help inform a future intervention study focused on eviction awareness
and prevention
Jerry Ratcliffe was a police officer for a decade with the Metropolitan Police in London
(UK) until a winter mountaineering accident precipitated a move to academia.
Previous positions include a number of years as lecturer in policing (intelligence)
with Charles Sturt University (Australia), a senior research analyst position
with the Australian Institute of Criminology, and coordinator of Australia's
National Strategic Intelligence Course. He has a BSc and PhD from the University
of Nottingham and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department
of Criminal Justice, Temple University, Philadelphia. His published work
includes articles in journals such as the Journal of Quantitative Criminology,
the British Journal of Criminology, and Policing and Society. An edited
text on strategic criminal intelligence will be released next month.
Susan Sherman is an Assistant Research Professor at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health, in the Department of Epidemiology whose focus is on public HIV prevention,
overdose prevention, social networks as related to HIV risk behaviors, and
behavioral interventions targeting drug users. Her intervention trials primarily
focus on evaluating the impact in individuals and their social networks
of training drug users to perform peer education to their social networks.
She is involved in studies in the U.S., Thailand, Russia and Pakistan. Her
newest area of research is the efficacy of HIV prevention and economic development
interventions with drug using women.
Kathleen
J. Sikkema received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology
in 1991 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, with a
specialization in health and community psychology. She is an Associate Professor
of Psychiatry (and of Psychology, and Epidemiology and Pubic Health) at
Yale University School of Medicine. She is the Director of the Community
Research Core in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA)
and is also the Director of HIV Prevention and Mental Health Research in
The Consultation Center at Yale University. Dr. Sikkema's research is focused
on the development and evaluation of HIV risk behavior change interventions,
with expertise in community-level interventions. She has served as the Principal
Investigator of two multi-site community level interventions, undertaken
with women and adolescents living in low-income housing developments in
geographically diverse U.S. cities. She is currently conducting research
to determine whether this model can be effectively tailored for persons
with severe mental illness, who are formerly homeless and currently living
in transitional housing. Dr. Sikkema also conducts research on the development
of HIV-related mental health and coping interventions, and has been the
Principal Investigator of two studies evaluating group interventions for
men and women with HIV. Her HIV mental health research has been focused
on a psychological intervention model to assist persons with HIV disease
who are coping with AIDS-related loss and bereavement and is currently conducting
a randomized controlled trial of a coping and secondary prevention intervention
for men and women with HIV who have experienced childhood sexual abuse.
In addition, she is pilot testing an HIV prevention intervention for women
seeking services related to abuse and violence in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Amy Smoyer is a Research Associate with CIRA's Law, Policy and Ethics Core. Her work
at CIRA has focused on harm reduction strategies and analyses of U.S. drug
policy. Before coming to CIRA, Amy lived in Spain where she conducted research
on the public policy process around the creation of needle exchange programs.
Jon S. Vernick is an Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at The Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is also Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins
Center for Gun Policy and Research. In addition, he is Associate Director
of the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown
Universities, where he holds an appointment as Adjunct Professor of Law.
At Johns Hopkins, Prof. Vernick teaches courses on Issues in Injury and
Violence Prevention, and Public Health and the Law. Prof. Vernick's work
has concentrated on ways in which the law and legal interventions can improve
the public's health. He is particularly interested in epidemiology, policy,
legal, and ethical issues associated with firearm and motor vehicle injuries.
He has also examined legal and ethical issues associated with syringe access
policies in the United States; responses to emerging infectious diseases;
and public health advocacy. Prof. Vernick has published more than 40 scholarly
articles on these and other topics. His public health practice includes
working with the media, policy-makers, and advocates to provide information
about effective interventions. Jon Vernick joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins
in 1991. He received a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, his law degree
cum laude from George Washington University, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins
School of Public Health.
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| YACS@CIRA |
Thursday, 12/03
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Speaker: Nabila El-Bassel, Columbia University
Title: HIV Among Drug Users in Kazakhstan: Driving Forces and Implications for HIV Prevention & Treatment
Location: CHIP, 2006 Hillside Rd Unit 1248, Storrs, CT
Video Conference: CIRA, Ste. 200, Rm. 202, 135 College St, New Haven, CT
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| WORLD AIDS DAY |
 Tuesday, December 1 marks the 21st anniversary of World AIDS Day. All are welcome to attend a memorial service at the United Church on the Green in New Haven.
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