COMMUNITY DISRUPTION AND HIV/AIDS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
September 13-14, 2012
American University, Butler Pavilion, Butler Boardroom
Organized by: Center on Health, Risk, and Society at AU
Co-organized by: Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at AU and the
District of Columbia Developmental Center for AIDS Research (DC D-CFAR)
Funded by: SAIC-Frederick and American University
Table of contents
1. OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................................................... 2 2. CONFERENCE GOALS AND STRUCTURE......................................................................................................... 2 3. CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS ........................................................................................................................... 4 DAY 1: HIGHLIGHTS .................................................................................................................................................. 4 Panel I: Incarceration/re-entry cycle .............................................................................................................. 4 Panel 2: Deportation ......................................................................................................................................... 6 Panel 3: Neighborhood change/”gentrification”............................................................................................. 7 DAY 2: HIGHLIGHTS .................................................................................................................................................. 8 Incarceration/Re-entry Working Group Report.............................................................................................. 8 Research gaps/questions:................................................................................................................................ 8 Types and sources of data that could facilitate research in the topic area (existing and new):............. 9 Deportation Working Group Report ................................................................................................................ 9 Neighborhood Change Working Group Report ............................................................................................. 9 4. FOLLOW UP ACTIVITIES ...............................................................................................................................10 5. ADDITIONAL POTENTIAL AREAS OF RESEARCH ............................................................................................12 6. CONCLUDING REMARKS..............................................................................................................................13 APPENDIX 1: PANEL MEMBER BIOGRAPHIES.......................................................................................................14 1 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
1. OVERVIEW Two things are noteworthy about the HIV/AIDS pandemic in DC: its sheer size and its disproportionate
impact on African Americans. At 1865.1 per 100,000, the rate of adults and adolescents living with
HIV/AIDS is higher in DC than any state in the US, and almost ten times that of the national rate of 192.5
(CDC Report, 2009). According to 2010 data from the DC Department of Health, the prevalence of HIV
among DC adults and adolescents is 3.2%, which is higher than the World Health Organization’s
definition of 1% for a generalized epidemic (Government of the District of Columbia, Department of
Health, HAHSTA, 2011). Furthermore, HIV/AIDS is overly represented among African Americans and in
certain wards. African Americans constitute 52% of the city’s population, but 79.4% of those currently
living with AIDS and 81.7% of new AIDS cases from 2005-09. African American women are even more
disproportionately impacted. African American men account for 74.6% of men living with AIDS in DC
while African American women account for 92.2% of women living with the virus in the city. In terms of
prevalence, 4.3% of African Americans in DC (6.3% of men and 2.6% of women) are HIV+, as are 1.8% if
Latino/as (3% of Latinos) and 1.2% of Whites (2.4% of White men). Rates of HIV prevalence among
Black women in DC are four times those of Latinas and 24 times those of White women.
These substantial disparities in HIV/AIDS in DC demand attention. Further, we propose that they are, in
large part, accounted for by social factors, factors which must be understood if we are to design effective
programs for preventing HIV/AIDS among and retaining in care, all vulnerable groups. In particular we
consider here, community disruption as a social process that is critical in shaping HIV/AIDS risk and
experiences with care and arguably, in producing related race and ethnic disparities. While there are
many different processes that disrupt communities, we focus on three that are particularly relevant for
HIV/AIDS in DC, although they are likely to also apply in many other locations: incarceration and re-entry,
deportation, and neighborhood change/gentrification.
To move this thinking forward, on September 13-14, 2012 American University’s Center on Health, Risk
and Society (CHRS) hosted a conference entitled: Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS in the District
of Columbia. The conference brought together over 80 participants from the DC Metropolitan Area and
beyond, ranging from social scientists, community workers and advocates, to government officials,
planners and policy makers, to medical doctors, to students, all to discuss these different processes of
community disruption and how they may impact on the DC HIV/AIDS pandemic. Some participants have
been working in or conducting research on HIV/AIDS for years, while others have had little to no
experience with HIV/AIDS but are experts on these processes of disruption. In this way, the conference
provided an opportunity to develop better understanding of the social dimensions of HIV/AIDS and to
foster interdisciplinary conversations and planning for new research collaborations.
This report summarizes the main themes that were addressed during and after the conference, and
accordingly, identifies potential new research areas related to community disruption and HIV/AIDS.
2. CONFERENCE GOALS AND STRUCTURE The main goals of the conference were as follows, to:
•
•
•
•
Provide a foundation on which to develop a body of research related to the social dimensions of
HIV, and secondarily, other health-related topics, in DC
Support the development of proposals for external funding for this research
Encourage interdisciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration in this research
Ensure collaboration with community partners so that resulting research is relevant and of priority
to the DC community
2 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
•
•
•
Enhance the theoretical strength of HIV and other health related research by bringing social
scientists (some of whom may not be engaging in health related research) together with health
researchers who may not be familiar with social science theories and concepts that have
implications for their research
Encourage researchers not currently engaging in HIV/AIDS and other health related research to
do so
If appropriate, to support the development of related writing projects
The two-day conference was organized around a plenary session and panel presentations on the first day
and smaller working group meetings, with report back, on the second. The plenary session provided an
overview of the state of the pandemic and response in the District and each of the three panels
addressed one of the areas of community disruption (incarceration/re-entry, deportation, and
neighborhood change/gentrification); the three working groups were also organized around these
processes of disruption. The panels each included three to four presenters, two discussants (who
provided some reflective comments to stimulate discussion), and a moderator. A convener and note-taker
was assigned to each of three working groups.
Although focused on health in DC, conference panelists represented institutions from around the country,
including the west (University of California-San Diego [participating via skype], University of Nevada, Las
Vegas), the south (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Florida, University of Texas,
Austin), the north (Medical College of Wisconsin), the northeast (University of Connecticut, Yale
University, Rutgers University, Cornell University), and the Washington, DC area (American University,
George Washington University, Georgetown University, University of Maryland, College Park, the
National Council of La Raza). Clearly, the conference themes have wide ranging geographic relevance.
Also in keeping with conference goals, panelists spoke from the perspective of multiple disciplines
including, anthropology, epidemiology, law, policy and management, psychology, public health, social
work, and sociology. Although many of the speakers on a particular panel were familiar with the work of
the other speakers, few knew of the work of everyone on their panel; fewer still knew the work of
speakers on the other panels. The same was true among conference participants more generally: those
with expertise or interest in a particular field knew some of the others working in that area, but because
participants included both HIV/AIDS researchers/experts and social scientists working in other health
areas and / or focusing on community disruption processes but not health, many faces and their
accompanying work were unknown to one another. Indeed, it is very likely that most participants met
colleagues and heard presentations on topics to which they would otherwise never have been exposed.
About 40 participants were able to attend the second day of the conference, and they were divided up
among three working groups; each working group included HIV and non-health researchers as well as a
balance of researchers and representatives from community groups. The working groups were structured
to bring together panelists and other conference participants with common interests, share information
about on-going research being conducted by participants, promote more in-depth discussion of
conference themes from day 1, and identify research gaps and potential research topic areas. In this way,
they enhanced network building and provided a foundation for future research collaborations. The report
back session further promoted these outcomes.
Prior to the conference, annotated bibliographies of select publications by the invited speakers, and
selected relevant funding opportunities had been circulated to encourage participants to reflect on
conference themes even before it began. In addition to the full bios of panelists (speakers, discussants,
and moderators), contact information for all the conference registrants was distributed to promote
continued networking and collaborations. To further leverage the networking opportunities offered by the
conference, we hosted a pre-conference dinner on September 12. Many of the featured speakers and
discussants attended, along with members of the organizing committee (AU faculty, the Director of the
DC D-CFAR and other DC based HIV scholars who could not make the conference). There were many
lively exchanges about ongoing research interests.
Please refer to Appendix 1 for List of Participants.
3 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
3. CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS Day 1: Highlights
The conference started with welcome remarks by AU Provost, Dr. Scott Bass and Dean of the College of
Arts and Sciences, Dr. Peter Starr, both of whom reiterated their commitment to support cutting edge
health research with a particular bearing on DC. Prior to the start of the substantive program, Dr. Kim
Blankenship (Project PI and Director of the Center on Health, Risk and Society [CHRS] at
American University) provided a brief history of the conference idea and development, some
background on conference themes as they relate to HIV/AIDS in DC, and a description of conference
goals. Directors from the two Centers that were co-organizers, Dr. Eric Hershberg, Center for Latin
American and Latino Studies, American University and Dr. Alan Greenberg, District of Columbia
Developmental Center for AIDS Research (DC D-CFAR) also spoke briefly about both the importance of
the conference for accomplishing goals of their respective centers and their commitment to cooperating
with CHRS in supporting research collaborations that emerged out of the conference.
To situate the themes of community disruption within the DC pandemic, the conference began with a
plenary presentation by Dr. Gregory Pappas, Senior Deputy Director HAHSTA (HIV/AID, Hepatitis, STD,
and TB Administration), District of Columbia Department of Health. He provided a general overview of the
epidemiology of HIV/AIDS in DC, in which he acknowledged the unique position of DC: to the extent that
it is likened and compared to states, its HIV/AIDS rates are well above those of any other. But to the
extent that it is likened and compared to other major metropolitan areas, it is one of the 12 cities where,
together, half of all of those infected in the US live; two of these areas have higher prevalence rates and
two have higher incidence rates than DC, so it does not stand out to quite the same degree as it does
when compared to the 50 states. Dr. Pappas also discussed the concentration of HIVAIDS in DC in
certain geographic locations and populations, namely Blacks and MSMs. In some preliminary analyses
conducted by HAHSTA, over half of the variance in case rate distribution across neighborhoods appears
to be associated with gentrification. While he emphasized the strides made by DC in promoting testing
and advancing service delivery, he also discussed the challenges associated with both, in a context
where the population is not only mobile, but may be crossing back and forth between city and state (VA
and MD) lines. In his presentation, he argued for establishing a domestic PEPFAR for the DC metro
area, and a patient-centered medical home model of care, as an alternative service delivery approach.
And, he suggested a number of reasons that DC is particularly well-situated to develop and implement
such a model.
The following section summarizes the presentations by featured speakers on each of the three panels.
Full versions of power point presentations will be available on our website (see Section 4 below).
Panel I: Incarceration/re-entry cycle
Todd Clear, PhD: Dean, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University “Coercive Mobility--Theory and
Evidence”
Clear gave an overview of his groundbreaking work on coercive mobility (the movement back and forth
between the criminal justice system and the community) and its effect on community crime rates. In
particular, he presented data on the extensive consequences of mass incarceration that raises significant
questions about whether this approach actually reduces crime. As the incarceration rate soared in the
period from 1980 to 2000, its impact was concentrated by gender, race, and space. Over 90% of
prisoners are male. Black men are 7X as likely as White men to go to prison and Black women 8X as
likely as White women. Twelve percent of Black men age 20-40 are behind bars and at current rates, 1/3
of Black men will have gone to prison at some point in their lives. Incarceration’s impacts are also not
randomly distributed geographically. In Baltimore and Cleveland there are neighborhoods where 18% of
adult males are behind bars; in Chicago over half of prisoners return to 7 neighborhoods. And race is
entangled in these neighborhood impacts. For example, in Brooklyn, incarceration rates in predominantly
Black neighborhoods are 12.4% as compared to 2.7% in predominantly White neighborhoods. Clear
4 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
presented additional data suggesting that at a certain point, mass incarceration, through its impacts on
community economic structures, parental capacity (almost half of all incarcerated individuals are parents),
and family stability actually produces higher crime rates, rather than protecting against crime. Though it is
not part of his research, many of these same consequences of mass incarceration are associated with
HIV risk. In this way, Clear’s work on the community disruption created by coercive mobility and mass
incarceration can provide a framework for understanding HIV/AIDS-related vulnerability. Furthermore, he
outlined an alternative approach to crime—a community justice approach—that has the potential to
redirect resources spent on incarceration to community building and services, which would also have
implications for addressing HIV/AIDS risk, treatment and care.
Christopher Wildeman, PhD: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Yale University
“Incarceration and Population Health in Wealthy Democracies”
In his presentation, Wildeman used country level data to address the question if and to what extent
population health in high income countries is associated with incarceration rates, and whether such
association may be different in the US as compared to other wealthy democracies. Using Life Expectancy
at Birth (LEB) and Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) as two measures of population health, he suggested that
typical explanations for why the US lags substantially behind other wealthy countries on these measures
are incomplete. Instead of, or in addition to, the effects of income inequality, generosity of the welfare
state, and individual behaviors, he suggested that these rates may be related to high rates of
incarceration in the US. Analyzing LEB, IMR, age-specific mortality, and the average incarceration rate in
the past 3 years, he showed reduced total, male, and female LEP and increased IMR associated with
incarceration for the US only. He argued that these impacts are due to spillover effects of incarceration
that occur in the US but not in other wealthy nations. Many of these spillover effects are associated with
HIV risk (see description of Clear’s presentation above). His findings provide further evidence for the
potential importance of considering mass incarceration as a form of community disruption related to a
range of health issues, including HIV/AIDS. Further, they suggest that incarceration need not have these
impacts; other wealthy nations do not see the same spillover effects. His presentation also emphasized
the potential to use aggregate longitudinal data and comparative research designs to understand how
community disruption may be associated with HIV/AIDS.
James C. Thomas, MPH, PhD: Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public
Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill “Community Health Effects of Incarceration”
Thomas focused his talk on North Carolina, locating mass incarceration in a long history of social forces
that have disrupted communities in the state, and disproportionately impacted Blacks, both urban and
rural. Pulling from a variety of studies he has conducted in NC and elsewhere, he presented data
demonstrating a relationship between rates of incarceration and STDs. Further, he suggested how this
association may reflect the indirect effects of incarceration on community stability. His data demonstrate
that incarceration is associated with STDs via both its direct impacts on individuals and its indirect
impacts on communities. The former include changes in sexual partnerships following release from
prison, pressing financial needs of the family resulting in risky sexual exchanges, and changing
substance use, among others. The latter include the loss of social capital and collective efficacy in
already distressed communities.
Maria Khan, PhD: Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, University of Florida at Gainesville
“Incarceration-related Social Network Disruption, and How HIV Thrives on it”
Khan presented key findings from her research, including two NIDA supported projects on which she
serves as PI: a) Longitudinal Study of Substance Use, Incarceration, and STI in the US and b)
Relationship Disruption during Incarceration and HIV Risk in African American Men. She framed the
presentation in a conceptual model in which criminal justice involvement represents an underlying
determinant of HIV risk that operates through intermediate determinants (e.g. network disruption,
breakdown of norms, elevation of substance use, reduction of employment prospects, etc) and proximate
determinants (e.g. multiple and concurrent partnerships, discordant partnerships, sex trade involvement).
Then she discussed findings that indicate increased risk of HIV associated with both personal
5 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
incarceration and the incarceration of a sexual partner. Additional findings demonstrated that some of this
increased risk is likely due to the association between incarceration and high-risk partnerships, and
between incarceration and the disruption of committed partnerships (which tend to be less risky than
other types of partnerships). In addition, her research suggests that individuals living in communities with
high rates of incarceration are at greater risk for HIV.
Panel 2: Deportation
Julia Dickson-Gomez, PhD: Professor, Center for AIDS Intervention Research, Medical College of
Wisconsin “Left Behind: The Effects of Immigration on Salvadoran Children, Families and
Communities”
Dickson-Gómez presented her ongoing research on the effects of immigration and deportation among
Salvadoran communities. She argued that both are part of the same process of global population
movement—many Salvadorans cannot find jobs in their own country so they migrate to the US, often
leaving behind family members, including young children and adolescents. The family disruption leaves
children unsupervised, feeling abandoned, mentally distressed, and vulnerable to substance use,
homelessness, and joining gangs. Gang activity, in turn, is associated with more crime; the higher crime
may drive more parents to leave, in search of jobs to earn money to move their families to a “better life,”
and a vicious cycle ensues, with clear implications for HIV risk. Even when individuals who have migrated
to the US send remittances back to El Salvador, and the money is put towards education, there are few
jobs available in El Salvador for these educated individuals, further fueling the vicious cycle of frustration
and hopelessness. Conversely, in interviews with family members who had migrated to the US, she found
that they often developed crack additions in the US, which in turn could lead them to criminal activity and
deportation back to El Salvador, where they may not have lived for many years and where drug treatment
is virtually non-existent, leading in turn to continued or more drug use and crime. Dickson-Gomez’s work
then, shows how disruptions associated with both migration and deportation can provoke HIV related risk
behaviors in both sending and receiving countries.
Victoria D. Ojeda, MPH, PhD: Assistant Professor, Division of Global Public Health, Department of
Medicine, University of California at San Diego “Deportation Experiences of Mexican Drug Users:
Implications for U.S.-Based HIV and Drug Use Research”
Ojeda presented key findings from studies conducted among a cohort of injection drug users in Tijuana,
Mexico. In particular, she drew from qualitative and quantitative data collected from sub samples of
deportees (individuals who had migrated to the US and been deported back to Tijuana for various
reasons). In the full sample of IDUs, HIV prevalence was 5.4% among women and 2.4% among men, but
men who had been deported were 4X as likely to be HIV positive as compared to men who had not been.
Many study participants felt that their deportation was a consequence of drug use, and indicated that their
drug problems began when they migrated to the US. Conversely, those who reported they had not been
injectors prior to deportation became injectors after. Ojeda also discussed the specific issues faced by
women deported back to Tijuana, who described feeling lonely and sad following their most recent
deportations, often because they were separated from children and other family members in the United
States and elsewhere in Mexico; this, they indicated, intensified their drug use problems. Ojeda
concluded by identifying a number of research gaps and data needs to better understand the
consequences of deportation in relation to HIV and other health risks. In particular, she focused on the
need for more social network research, research focused on understanding how community
characteristics (sending and returning communities) may impact on the experience of deportation, preand post-migration and deportation behaviors, and the need to better understand the destabilizing
impacts of deportation on families and the subsequent consequences for health and behaviors of children
and adolescents.
Luis H. Zayas, PhD: Dean of the School of Social Work and Centennial Professor in Leadership at The
University of Texas at Austin “From Case to Cause: Protecting Citizen-Children through Practice,
Research, and Advocacy”
6 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
Dr. Zayas’ presentation focused on his work with citizen children whose parents are facing deportation.
Initially, his involvement with this population was as an advocate; he testified in removal hearings about
the consequences for citizen children if a parent(s) was deported. Often, the removal orders were
cancelled, particularly in instances where the child had cognitive or emotional conditions that would
exacerbate any hardships and poor health consequences of the parental deportation. He also discussed
new research that he is undertaking with funding from NIH to examine the effects of parental deportation
on the mental and psychosocial functioning of young citizen children. The project is a mixed methods
longitudinal study of four distinct groups of children of undocumented Mexican immigrant parents. It will
provide data that he hopes will enhance advocacy work on behalf of citizen children, as well as become a
foundation on which to build a larger R01 study with more measures, different groups of immigrants and
larger sample sizes.
Panel 3: Neighborhood change/”gentrification”
Jeffrey “Bart” Bingenheimer, PhD, MPH: Assistant Professor, Department of Prevention and
Community Health, School of Public Health and Health Services, The George Washington University
“Neighborhood Mortality and Age at First Intercourse among Chicago Adolescents”
Early sexual debut has been show to be associated with greater likelihood of teen pregnancy, HIV, and
other STIs. In his presentation, Bingenheimer discussed quantitative analyses he has conducted
examining neighborhood factors that may be associated with early sexual debut. In particular, he was
interested to add neighborhood mortality rates to other neighborhood factors examined in the research
literature. His models predicting early sexual debut included neighborhood mortality rates as well as
measures of residential stability, collective efficacy, concentrated disadvantage, and immigrant
concentration. While he found that neighborhood mortality rates have effects that are significant and
independent from concentrated disadvantage, when all neighborhood level factors are included, they are
no longer significant—it was impossible to separate their effect from other neighborhood factors and to
draw related conclusions. More generally, his presentation highlighted some of the challenges of
measuring and analyzing neighborhood level impacts on health outcomes.
Andrew Deener, PhD: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut
“Neighborhood Change and the Reconfiguration of Groups”
Deener’s case study of Venice, CA provided a detailed analysis of the complex process of neighborhood
formation, change, and gentrification. Combining extensive archival, ethnographic and oral history data
from five different parts of the city, he described the struggles, clashing identities and agendas, and
compromises, that transformed the community, with some neighborhoods remaining racially and
economically diverse and others becoming increasingly gentrified and exclusive. He described how these
processes reconfigured local demographics, organizations, opportunities, and interactions, creating in
many instances, particularly among those made homeless, uncertainty, anxiety and danger. In this way,
his presentation provided an in-depth, historical view of the disruption created by gentrification, as well as
insight into how neighborhoods may be able to preserve diversity and reduce the disruption associated
with neighborhood development.
Laura Tach, PhD: Assistant Professor, Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell
University, “De-Concentrating the Poor: How Public Housing Demolition Influences Health
Environments and Health Behaviors”
Tach presented her research on the impacts of urban redevelopment in which high-density public housing
was replaced with the HOPE VI program (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) in an effort to
deconcentrate poverty. Residents in the demolished public housing projects were offered the option of a
voucher, another public housing unit, or a unit in the newly constructed HOPE VI development. She
discussed research analyzing a range of factors affecting HIV and other health risks, including access to
illegal drugs, risky sexual activity, residential instability & homelessness, social networks, health care
access & preventive care, and supportive services, comparing them in public housing and after
7 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
redevelopment (wherever possible differentiating between movers and stayers). She suggested that in
places she studied, the HOPE VI redevelopment initiative appears to have decreased resident exposure
to illegal drugs, risky sexual activities (among stayers), and residential instability & homelessness.
However, after redevelopment, she found increased isolation and disruption of networks among both
movers and stayers, little change in utilization of screening and preventive care services and only minor
changes in the availability of on-site services and linkages to community based organizations. She ended
by calling for more in-depth study of the most ‘at risk’ subset of the public housing population.
Shannon M. Monnat, PhD: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Nevada, Las
Vegas, “Geographic Correlates of HIV Risk Behavior and Utilization of HIV Testing”
Using national aggregate data, Monnat presented findings on factors negatively (nonmetropolitan county,
% poverty, % owner occupied housing, and residential stability) and positively (% Black, gini coefficient,
% illiterate, violent crime rate, % college graduates, population density, and log total population)
correlated with county HIV rates. In addition, using data from the 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor
Surveillance System, she analyzed the association between a variety of county-level contextual factors
and individual level risky sexual and testing behaviors. Most were not associated with risk and testing
behaviors. Monnat concluded by suggesting a number of possible untested sources of variation to
explore further, including community intervention efforts, patterns of social networks, presence of law
enforcement, and existing health care services.
Day 2: Highlights
The second day of the conference was divided into three smaller working groups in the areas of a)
Incarceration/re-entry, b) Deportation and c) Neighborhood change. Each group was tasked with
identifying gaps in existing research in their respective areas, highlighting critical research questions, and
suggesting the types and sources of data that could facilitate research. Groups were also asked to
identify possible funding sources for related research. Following their 90-minute meetings, working
groups reported back to the full group.
Incarceration/Re-entry Working Group Report
Research gaps/questions:
• To what extent are impacts associated with incarceration unique to incarceration and to what extent
are they related to drug use, poverty, etc.?
• What are the impacts of criminal justice involvement on children, families and partners, who may not
themselves be CJ involved?
• How do we truly measure different types of relationships/partnerships to understand how they are
impacted by criminal justice involvement (i.e. qualitative data reveal that people have complex
understandings of relationships, sex partners, commitment, etc)?
• How can we conceptualize, measure and analyze community level impacts of the criminal justice
system in ways that capture more than aggregations of individual characteristics?
• What types of interventions can be effective in addressing the impacts of CJ involvement (structural
and policy interventions that keep people out of the CJ system as well as interventions to reduce the
impacts of CJ involvement)?
• How can we be most effective in promoting change in CJ policy?
• In what ways are the instabilities and disruptions created by incarceration/re-entry similar to and
different from disruptions associated with military service? Deportation?
• Are there characteristics of CJ involvement and subsequent impacts that are unique to DC (e.g.
because it is not a state, prisoners frequently serve prison time far away, more vulnerable to federal
penalties, etc.)?
8 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
Types and sources of data that could facilitate research in the topic area (existing and new):
• Existing data that has been collected for other purposes that may ask about incarceration experience
(e.g. WIHS data, Fragile Families, ADD Health)?
• Longitudinal data drawn from vulnerable populations, such that drug use, CJ involvement, HIV status
are variable
• Policy analysis/collation of policy characteristics
• Community level data (aggregate data but also qualitative/ethnographic/archival)
Possible funding/other activities:
• DC C-FAR, DCPFAP funding to experienced investigators who do not currently engage in research in
DC on CJ/HIV relationship but would like to
• NIH funding (NIDA, NIMH?), perhaps disparities RFA; collaboration between conference participants
with experience in this area (e.g. Khan and Blankenship)
• Opportunities to link with local community groups who are doing work with CJ involved populations
but not necessarily HIV research
Deportation Working Group Report
Research gaps/questions:
• Little knowledge of impact on communities in sending countries or the U.S. Transnational studies
could incorporate systematic, comparative analysis across state borders in the U.S. and national
borders in Latin America.
• What are the health outcomes of illegality or “deportability”? Are there ways to differentiate the
adverse effects of deportability from deportation?
• Impacts: foster care system, courts, advocacy, health disparities measured through multiple
variables, educational outcomes, etc.
Types and sources of data that could facilitate research in the topic area (existing and new):
• What are the primary units of analysis? Whose story are we attempting to reflect in our research?
What is our dependent variable? What outcome(s) are we try to explain? These variables are likely
going to conditioned by our advocacy agenda.
• Large-N vs. small-N; survey vs. community-based; sampling strategies
• Disaggregate relevant populations across and within sending/receiving locations
• Include expertise and perspective from studies of the law, as well as the obvious social and
behavioral sciences.
Possible funding/other potential activities:
• Sharing info and contacts about related work underway, perhaps adding components or expanding
on currently funded NIH projects (e.g. Zayas, Dickson-Gomez)
• Possible conference to present agendas re: deportation and health focused in part but not exclusively
on HIV/AIDS
Neighborhood Change Working Group Report
Research gaps/questions:
• How do population stocks & flows of both people and institutions influence HIV risk
• What are the behavior changes associated with different types of neighborhood change?
• How do we integrate data collection across DC/MD/VA?
Types and sources of data that could facilitate research in the topic area (existing and new):
• Case control studies that incorporate neighborhood contextual data
• Mine existing longitudinal datasets
• New representative research to study connections between people and places
9 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
Possible funding sources/other activities:
• DC PFAP (NIH Internal funding)
• DC-DCFAR
• Small NIH grants (R03, R21)
4. FOLLOW UP ACTIVITIES On September 19, CHRS organized a brainstorming meeting of AU faculty, student RAs, and research
staff, to reflect on key themes and ideas raised at the conference, and discuss potential follow up
activities for the Center and beyond. In general, we agreed that there were many common themes across
the specific areas of community disruption highlighted at the conference, and that the broad concept of
community disruption provided a highly innovative and relevant framework for understanding and
analyzing HIV/AIDS, as well as other health issues, in DC and beyond. The discussion focused on
several different types of activities through which to continue the momentum begun with the conference,
including: speakers; conferences; research collaborations and proposal development; dissemination
through website, reports and publications. These are described below in greater detail.
Invited Speakers: One of the successes of the conference was to bring together researchers who
might otherwise have remained unknown to each other but who, in sharing their work, may find
considerable potential for highly innovative conceptual and research collaborations with implications for
HIV/AIDS, health disparities, and health promotion more generally. We will continue to do this by
leveraging existing seminar series (especially the CHRS weekly seminar and the AU sociology
department’s monthly research seminar series) to invite speakers on themes of community disruption
who can present their work to DC-based HIV and health researchers. Where possible, we will schedule
additional individual or small-group meetings with these speakers to discuss research collaborations.
•
On November 28, Typhanye Penniman Dyer, Research Assistant Professor, University of Maryland
and University of Florida who served as one of the discussants at the conference gave a talk at the
weekly CHRS seminar. Her talk entitled, “Individual-Level and Social-Level Factors Impacting
HIV Risk among Black MSM” discussed substance use, mental health and sexual risk among Black
men who have sex with men and women (MSMW), and how sex and drug risk networks of MSMW
translates into risk for their female partners. Among other things, the presentation provoked a
discussion of the role of incarceration in promoting risk both for Black MSM and Black MSMW. Dr.
Dyer expressed considerable interest in participating in collaborative research with AU investigators
on this topic (see below).
•
On December 5, Joanna Dreby, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University at Albany,
State University of New York presented her research in a talk entitled, "The Rippling Effects of
Deportations on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families.” She discussed findings from her
ethnographic research on the social, psychosocial and physical experiences of parents and children
in Mexican immigrant families in two different communities, one where there is a strong collective
presence of immigrants and the other where there is not. She focused in particular on the impacts of
“illegality” and “deportability.” In this way, she brought together conference themes of both deportation
and neighborhood/community level characterizations as they relate to health. As part of ongoing
collaboration between CHRS and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) to
undertake research on deportation and health, Dr. Dreby met with the Directors and staff of both
Centers after the seminar to discuss possible research collaborations; and CLALS hosted a dinner
later in the evening to continue these discussions.
•
Spring CHRS seminar series and Sociology Department Research Seminar Series; Over spring
2013, the weekly seminar series run by CHRS will continue the theme of community disruption by
hosting outside speakers on the topic. The Sociology Department may also invite or co-host relevant
speakers. Among the presenters being considered (some of whom were invited to the conference but
could not attend) are: Mary Patillo, Howard Washington Professor of Sociology, Northwestern
10 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
University (http://www.sociology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/mary-pattillo.html); Bruce Western,
Professor of Sociology, Harvard University (http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/soc/faculty/western/ ); Adaora
Adimora, Professor of Medicine, School of Medicine, and Professor of Epidemiology, Gillings School
of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
(http://www.med.unc.edu/infdis/faculty/adaora-adimora-md/ ); Lisa Bowleg, Associate Professor,
Department of Community Health and Prevention, School of Public Health, Drexel University
(http://publichealth.drexel.edu/Faculty/Faculty-Member/5034/facultyid--62/#general ), and Jennifer
Hirsch, Professor of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
(http://www.mailman.columbia.edu/our-faculty/profile?uni=jsh2124 )
Conferences: Another mechanism for continuing to promote discussion and research related to
community disruption and HIV/AIDS will be through organizing panels or related activities at upcoming
conferences or to organize new, related conferences. Currently, plans for three such activities are
underway.
•
On October 23-24, 2013 the DC D-CFAR will host an annual scientific meeting of the Social
Behavioral Science Research Network of the CFARs. Dr. Blankenship, and several participants in
the AU community disruption conference, are on the SBSRN conference planning committee. The
title of the conference will be “Social, Behavioral and Policy Perspectives on HIV/AIDS: the District of
Columbia and Beyond,” and at least one speaker on each of the three scientific panels will focus on
themes similar to those addressed at the community disruption conference (e.g. incarceration,
neighborhood segregation).
•
Julia Dickson-Gomez, Professor, Center for AIDS Intervention Research, Medical College of
Wisconsin and presenter at the community disruption conference is exploring the possibility of
organizing a research conference at CAIR on issues of deportation, particularly in relation to
HIV/AIDS.
•
As a result of follow-up conversations with CLALS, Luis Zayas is considering preparing an R-13
grant application to support a conference on cutting-edge research on deportation and health. CLALS
has contributed an extensive literature review on the subject to help inform the proposal draft.
Research Collaborations and Proposal Development: At working groups organized as part of
Day 2 activities, researchers and representatives from community based organizations in DC began to
discuss possible research collaborations. Various activities have already begun to continue and further
facilitate this work, including new initiatives and efforts to incorporate conference themes into other
initiatives.
•
Health and deportation: Discussions have already begun among CHRS, CLALS, and Dr. Zayas (a
presenter at the community disruption) about collaborating on research related to deportation and
health (including HIV/AIDS). Most immediately, an R-21 grant proposal was submitted in February to
NIH’s funding opportunity for research focused on reducing health disparities among minority and
underdeserved children. Kim Blankenship from CHRS and Eric Hershberg from CLALS are coprincipal investigators. The parallel proposal builds on Zayas’s work with Mexican origin families by
incorporating a sample drawn from the unauthorized Salvadoran population in the Washington, D.C.
metropolitan area. Our hypothesis is that the country of origin variable will prove consequential for a
number of reasons, a few of which include reduced mobility among Central American migrants,
circumstances of gang violence in the U.S. and El Salvador, and low connectivity levels among
Salvadoran immigrant communities. With significant input from leading researchers on deportation,
Salvadoran immigration, and transnational families—including Joanna Dreby at the University at
Albany-SUNY, Cecilia Menjívar at Arizona State University, Leisy Abrego at UCLA, and Jacqueline
Hagan at UNC, we have built a strong rationale for the comparative study.
11 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
Though not directly related to HIV/AIDS, CLALS also is planning to submit both Zayas’s work and the
current version of our draft proposal this month to Ford Foundation staff to inform them about
possible research ideas that could make their immigration rights portfolio more transnational.
•
Other projects under consideration: A cohort study of HIV+ (and possibly a matched sample of
HIV-) individuals with criminal justice involvement is being discussed by Irene Kuo (a conference
discussant), Kim Blankenship, and Curt Beckwith (Brown University); discussions with staff from local
clinics and with Gregory Pappas (the plenary speaker at the conference) about a potential research
agenda exploring factors associated with engagement in care and successful suppression of viral
load in HIV infected patients; conversations about how to leverage the WIHS cohort to understand the
impacts of community disruption on HIV risk and HIV-related outcomes (to date, these discussions
have focused on the themes of criminal justice involvement and geographic mobility and
neighborhood transition); interest (especially among Blankenship, Khan, and Penniman Dyer) in a
project that would focus in particular on the extent to which extraordinary race disparities in HIV/AIDS
among women in DC can be explained by CJ involvement (their own, that of their partners, as well as
the gender imbalance in the communities in which they live that is created by mass incarceration).
•
DC D-CFAR pilot project program: The DC D-CFAR runs a vibrant, competitive pilot project
program that to date, has (appropriately) focused on providing pilot funds to early stage investigators
to help them gather pilot data that can be used to develop externally funded research on HIV/AIDS.
Recently, the D-CFAR put out a call for proposals that aimed at sparking research in priority areas,
one of them being HIV/AIDS research related to criminal justice affected communities.
•
CHRS pilot project program: CHRS is also initiating a pilot project research program and is
considering issuing a call for proposals for research related to community disruption and health,
including HIV/AIDS.
•
CHRS grant proposal development workshops: While some of the sessions of the weekly CHRS
seminar feature speakers, others will be organized as grant development workshops. These will
provide investigators in varying stages of the grant development process an opportunity to discuss
and get feedback on their ideas. Investigators in early stages may want to discuss ideas they have for
responding to an RFA/PA, and identify potential collaborators. At later stages, draft proposals will be
assigned to 2 discussants who will make specific comments and then open the meeting to further
comment from participants. The same investigator may take advantage of the seminar at different
stages of proposal development.
•
Bibliographies and literature reviews: In preparation for the conference, CHRS and CLALS
collaborated in preparing a bibliography and literature review on deportation and health. It confirmed
that while there is a growing literature analyzing the health consequences of being deported (e.g.
research by Victoria Ojeda and her colleagues on HIV among deportees along the Mexican side of
the border), and a larger body of scholarship looking at transnational migration and health (including
Julia Dickson-Gomez’s work in El Salvador), no rigorous, systematic, longitudinal work has been
done on the health impacts of deportation on children of deportees—many U.S. citizens—who have
remained in the U.S. or effectively been deported with their parents. Nor is there significant research
on the impact of deportation on HIV/AIDS, except a small body of work exploring the extent to which
fear of deportation may affect willingness to get tested or access care and services. CHRS will
continue to use some of its resources to support the development of bibliographies/literature reviews
in support of proposal development, as needed, including on some of the topics discussed above.
5. ADDITIONAL POTENTIAL AREAS OF RESEARCH Work is already underway to develop research collaborations and projects around a number of topic
areas emerging as priorities from the conference (see section 4 above). For the longer term, the
conference identified other research gaps and potential areas of work that may warrant further attention
12 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
over the coming year(s). Some of these will likely be of interest to NIH, some to other private and
government funders. These are briefly discussed below.
Deportability and arrestability refer to the notion that entire communities may feel vulnerable to and
fear of police and state authority, regardless of their immigration status and regardless of whether they
have, individually, committed a crime. Research to better understand whether these concepts are
operative among certain communities and/or in certain neighborhoods in DC and if so, how they may
affect health, may be in order. Arguably, those who fear deportation or arrest, or even fear that they may
be forced by authorities to report on other members of their communities who are undocumented or who
have committed crimes, may be less willing to engage with social and health service systems. From the
standpoint of HIV/AIDS, this could, for example, make them less likely to seek care for STIs, get tested
for HIV, or engage with care if they are HIV+.
As DC contemplates a new, regional strategy to HIV prevention and care, in part to account for the high
degree of mobility of its population and pockets of neighborhood disruptions, implementation research
may be called for. Such research could address questions about whether and how a regional approach
can overcome these issues most effectively, and what kinds of challenges do policymakers and providers
face in implementing such a model of service delivery?
There is a potentially large research agenda related to health and deportation, but it may be useful to
begin with a better understanding of the geographic distribution of deportation in the city. Specifically,
more information is needed on where in the DC area deportation is taking place and who are being
subjected to deportation (country of origin, demographic characteristics). Also, there is limited availability
of data by gender. Given that Latino men have been the major target of deportation, it will be important to
understand whether it is creating, or has the potential to create gender imbalances in immigrant
communities in much the same way that incarceration has created them in Black communities, and with
what effects on family stability and sexual networks and relationships.
Preliminary data analyses conducted by HAHSTA suggest a high correlation between gentrification and
rates of HIV. Still, much more research needs to be conducted to confidently document this association
and to explain the dynamics of gentrification, social network disruption, and HIV.
6. CONCLUDING REMARKS The conference has been successful in sparking new and innovative thinking about the concepts and
processes of community disruption and their potential impacts on HIV and other health outcomes. While it
focused on three distinct disruptive processes—incarceration/re-entry, deportation, and
gentrification/neighborhood change—it also revealed important similarities across these processes. The
conference brought together social scientists and HIV/AIDS researchers who might not ever have learned
of each other’s work and in so doing, has the potential to stimulate interdisciplinary, theoretically complex
and methodologically rigorous research collaborations. In addition, it helped strengthen institutional
collaborations at AU (e.g. CHRS and CLALS), between AU and the DC D-CFAR, and between AU and
HAHSTA. The numerous follow-up plans described above will help ensure that the work begun at the
conference will continue and will provide a foundation for a range of new research on the social
dimensions of HIV/AIDS in the DC.
13 Community Disruption and HIV/AIDS In the District Of Columbia, Sept 13-14, 2012 American University
APPENDIX 1: PANEL MEMBER BIOGRAPHIES jimi adams, PhD
jimi adams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at American University. A current
primary project – Interdisciplinary Dynamics in Emerging Areas of Science (seed funding from the Robert
Wood Johnson foundation) – examines the ways that scientific network structures shape success/failures
in problem-based fields of inquiry (including HIV/AIDS). His research interests include diffusion of
information, network epidemiology, mixed methods, sociology of science, HIV/AIDS, Sub-Saharan Africa,
simulation modeling and religion. His teaching interests include social networks, research methods,
sociological theory, sociology of religion, and sociology of science.
Contact: jadams@american.edu
Michael D.M. Bader, PhD
Michael Bader is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at American University. He
researches cities and ways in which people interact within the built environment. His scholarship centers
on racial and economic segregation, neighborhood inequality, and health and nutrition disparities. He is
also interested in social science methodology. Bader is collaborating with colleagues from Columbia
University to evaluate the effectiveness of Google Street View as an alternative to costly in-person
neighborhood audits. Previously, he worked as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society
Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.
Contact: bader@american.edu
Jeffrey "Bart" Bingenheimer, PhD
Jeffrey “Bart” Bingenheimer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Prevention and Community
Health at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. He received
his masters and doctoral training in public health at the University of Michigan, and held postdoctoral
positions at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Pennsylvania State University before moving to
GWU. His research focuses primarily on the social contexts of adolescent sexual and contraceptive use
behaviors. His primary current project is a longitudinal cohort study of gendered family and peer contexts
of sexual risk behaviors among adolescents and young adults in Ghana. As a graduate student he
worked extensively on the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.
Contact: bartbing@gwu.edu
Kim M. Blankenship, PhD
Kim M. Blankenship has been Professor and Chair in the Department of Sociology and Director of the
Center on Health, Risk and Society at American University since 2010. Prior to joining the AU faculty she
spent most of her career at Yale University including as Associate Director of the Center for
Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS from 1998-2008. She is interested in analyzing the social
determinants (especially race, class and gender inequality) of health, and structural interventions to
address these. Her research in this regard has focused primarily on HIV/AIDS and has been funded by
CDC, NIMH, NIDA, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Current research projects include a NIDA
funded multi-methods, longitudinal study of criminal justice involved non-violent drug offenders in New
Haven, CT that seeks to understand the impact of the incarceration/re-entry cycle (coercive mobility) on
HIV related risk generally and the extent to which it can account for race disparities in risk in particular. In
addition, she has funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to analyze the implementation and
impact of a community mobilization intervention to address HIV risk in female sex workers in India, and is
collaborating with Blair Johnson at the University of Connecticut on an NIMH funded meta analysis of
structural interventions in HIV prevention.
Contact: kim.blankenship@american.edu
Fernanda Trotta Bianchi, PhD
Fernanda Bianchi is a Senior Research Scientist in the Latino Health Research Center. The Center is
comprised of a group of researchers housed in the Department of Psychology at the George Washington
University. Dr. Bianchi holds a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the same university. She has
served as Principal/Co-Investigator or Project Director on several federally-funded NIH research projects both in the US and abroad. Most of her work has been in the area of health behavior and risk among
immigrant and minority populations, with a special focus on HIV and Latino MSM. She is currently the
Co-Investigator and Project Director of a large multi-site international R01 grant that will estimate
prevalence of HIV among MSM in Bogotá, Colombia and examine the social context in which HIV occurs,
including internal displacement, violence, and poverty. Dr. Bianchi also served as the Principal
Investigator of an R21 grant where she investigated the ways in which individual, social, and structural
conditions of immigrant Latino day laborers in Suburban Maryland affect their health and HIV risk. In
addition, she has served as Project Director on another NIH-funded project that investigated the influence
of context on sexual risk in a sample of Brazilian, Colombian, and Dominican immigrant MSM. Prior to
these projects, she was the recipient of a Minority Supplement Award from NIHM to study the
antecedents and consequences of disclosure of HIV status in a sample of HIV-positive Brazilian gay men.
Dr. Bianchi has been a strong advocate in the Latino immigrant community for more than a decade. She
is a member of the Latino Health Steering Committee for the Department of Health and Human Services
in Montgomery County and she also serves on the Board of Directors of a local Latino non-profit
organization (Identity Inc.) that provides services to Latino youth and families.
Contact: fbianchi@gwu.edu
Monica R. Biradavolu, PhD
Monica Biradavolu is Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and Assistant Director
of the Center on Health, Risk, and Society at American University. She has a PhD in Sociology from
Duke University and prior to joining AU in 2010, held post-doctoral positions at Yale University and Duke
University. Her research is broadly on the structural determinants of health with an emphasis on
HIV/AIDS. She has conducted ethnographic research on HIV prevention NGOs in India working with
female sex workers and organizations in the District of Columbia providing HIV services to the severely
mentally ill. Both studies focus on the following interrelated topics: (1) stigma and health, especially the
double stigma of HIV and multiple marginalized statuses in society (sex worker, mentally ill, in addition to
race, class, caste and gender inequities); (2) interventions/organizations that work with these
populations.
Contact: monica.biradavolu@american.edu
Todd R. Clear, PhD
Todd R. Clear is Dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. In 1978, he received a
Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from The University at Albany. Clear has also held professorships at Ball State
University, Rutgers University, Florida State University (where he was also Associate Dean of the School
of Criminology and Criminal Justice) and John Jay College of Criminal Justice (where he held the rank of
Distinguished Professor). He has authored 12 books and over 100 articles and book chapters. His most
recent book is Imprisoning Communities, by Oxford University Press. Clear has also written on
community justice, correctional classification, prediction methods in correctional programming,
community-based correctional methods, intermediate sanctions, and sentencing policy. He is currently
involved in studies of the criminological implications of “place,” and the economics of justice reinvestment.
Clear has served as president of The American Society of Criminology, The Academy of Criminal Justice
Sciences, and The Association of Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice. His work has
been recognized through several awards, including those of the American Society of Criminology, the
Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, The Rockefeller School of Public Policy, the American Probation
and Parole Association, the American Correctional Association, and the International Community
Corrections Association. He was the founding editor of the journal Criminology & Public Policy, published
by the American Society of Criminology.
Contact: todd.clear@rutgers.edu
Andrew Deener, PhD
Andrew Deener is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Connecticut.
His research focuses on the intersection of cities, markets, and culture. His first book, Venice: A
Contested Bohemia in Los Angeles, was published by the University of Chicago Press in July 2012.
Based on six years of ethnographic and historical research, he examines how homelessness,
immigration, and gentrification simultaneously transformed five adjacent neighborhoods in Venice since
the 1970s, and why some sustained race and class diversity while others became more exclusive. He is
currently writing a second book, based on historical and ethnographic research conducted while he was a
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania (20102012). Tentatively entitled, Feeding the City, it focuses on the transformation and decline of the food
distribution infrastructure in the context of five decades of population loss in the city of Philadelphia, along
with multiple political and economic approaches to overcoming the decline.
Contact: andrew.deener@uconn.edu
Julia Dickson-Gomez, PhD
Julia Dickson-Gomez is a Professor at the Center for AIDS Intervention Research, Medical College of
Wisconsin. She studies HIV prevention among drug users in the United States and El Salvador and is
also interested in the influence of structural factors on HIV risk. Her research explores the effects of
housing policy on drug users' access to housing, variations in housing status and housing options of drug
users, and levels of HIV risk related to these factors. Dr. Dickson-Gomez's work also explores macro- and
micro-social contexts of crack use and HIV risk in communities in El Salvador. She has used qualitative
methods to evaluate network-based HIV prevention interventions for drug users and at-risk women.
Contact: jdickson@mcw.edu
Typhanye Penniman Dyer, PhD, MPH
Typhanye Penniman Dyer is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Florida in the
Colleges of Public Health and Health Professions and Medicine. Dr. Dyer also has a research faculty
appointment in the School of Public Health at University of Maryland, College Park in the Epidemiology
and Biostatistics Department. Her research is in HIV/AIDS health disparities, women’s health, and
substance use. Her focus is on structural, as well as social, psychological, and cultural determinants of
racial/ethnic and gender disparities in health behaviors and health outcomes among marginalized
populations, as well as their families. Her research in HIV/AIDS examines substance use, mental health
and sexual risk among Black men who have sex with men and women (MSMW), and how sex and drug
risk networks of MSMW translates into risk for their female partners.
Contact: typhanye@umd.edu or typhanye@ufl.edu
Patricia Foxen, PhD
Patricia Foxen is the Deputy Director of Research at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), where she
leads the development and implementation of NCLR’s agenda for policy-oriented research across issue
areas, oversees the research team, and develops new research, particularly around Latino children and
youth, race/ethnicity and civil rights, and social integration. Her areas of expertise include migration and
integration of Latino communities, psychosocial health of immigrant and refugee children, youth, and
families, indigenous migrants, race, ethnicity and discrimination, cultural and medical anthropology, and
applied research.
Contact: pfoxen@nclr.org
Alan E. Greenberg, MD, MPH
Alan E. Greenberg is Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the
George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Dr. Greenberg is Director of
the NIH-funded District of Columbia Developmental Center for AIDS Research; Principal Investigator of
the DC Cohort; Principal Investigator of Public Health-Academic Partnerships with the DC Department of
Health and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation; Co-Investigator of the DC site of the CDCfunded National HIV Behavioral Surveillance system; Clinical Research Site Leader for the DC site of the
NIH-funded HIV Prevention Trials Network; Co-Director of the GW Graduate Certificate Program in
HIV/AIDS Studies; a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director, CDC; and a member of the NIH
IRAP Study Section.
Contact: aeg1@gwu.edu
Eric Hershberg, PhD
Eric Hershberg is Director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and Professor of
Government at American University. He received his Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and
has taught at New York University, Southern Illinois University, Columbia, Princeton, the New School and
Simon Fraser University. He served for fifteen years as a Program Director at the Social Science
Research Council in New York City. He has served as a consultant to numerous development and
philanthropic organizations, including the Ford Foundation, the World Bank and the Swedish International
Development Agency, as well as many universities. His research focuses on the comparative politics of
Latin America, and on the politics of development. Since arriving at AU in 2010, he has launched several
collaborative projects addressing challenges to the social, political and economic incorporation of Latinos
into the United States.
Contact: hershber@american.edu
Leslie Hinkson, PhD
Leslie Hinkson is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on the
areas of stratification and inequality, with an emphasis on the role and meaning of race across
institutional contexts and its effect on educational, employment, and health outcomes. She recently
completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Research Fellows at
the University of Michigan. There, her interests focused on racial differences in treatment, prevalence,
and control of disease. Her works in process include a project on Black-White differentials in the
pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment of hypertension; the determinants of racial
differences in the prevalence of premature birth and low birth weight; the link between prisoner health,
prisoner re-entry, and community disease burden; and the role of medical education in influencing
doctors’ beliefs about race and ethnicity in medical practice. As a means of enhancing her academic
research, she also engages in amateur sleuthing and fiction writing.
Contact: lrh27@georgetown.edu
Maria Khan, PhD
Maria Khan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Florida at
Gainesville. She completed her doctoral degree in Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina in
2007 and her post-doctoral fellowship in the NIDA-funded Behavioral Sciences Training Program at the
National Development and Research Institutes (NDRI) in 2009. She has recently joined the University of
Florida after serving for two years as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and
Biostatistics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Khan has considerable experience
researching social and behavioral determinants of STI/HIV in vulnerable populations, focusing in recent
years on the nexus between incarceration and STI/HIV risk. She currently is funded to conduct a
longitudinal cohort study among African American men released from prison incarceration to examine the
influence of the dissolution of committed relationships that occurs during incarceration on the mental
health status and HIV-related sexual risk behaviors and drug use in this group during community re-entry
(1R01DA028766). She also has been funded to conduct secondary data analyses to examine longitudinal
relationships among drug use in adolescence, involvement in the criminal justice system, and adult
acquisition of sexually transmitted infection (STI) using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health (Add Health) (R03DA026735). Dr. Khan also has considerable experience conducting research on
determinants of STI/HIV in international settings including Burkina Faso, Madagascar, and Jamaica.
Contact: mariarabiakhan@gmail.com
Irene Kuo, PhD, MPH
Irene Kuo is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the
School of Public Health and Health Services at the George Washington University (GWU). She has
nearly 15 years of experience conducting research on infectious diseases (particularly HIV, HCV and
HBV) in substance using and other high risk populations, particularly injection drug users. Dr. Kuo is
currently the co-Principal Investigator of a NIDA and NIAID-sponsored study evaluating the use of an
information computerized tool (ICT) and text messaging to help link incarcerated populations into HIV
care upon release. She has also been Principal Investigator for several other NIH-funded studies
focusing on substance use and mental health treatment barriers among HIV-positive individuals and HIV
seroincidence studies among high risk heterosexual women and black men who have sex with men
(MSM). She is also currently Project Director and co-investigator for the Washington, DC site of the CDCsponsored National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) study, which consists of serial, cross-sectional
behavioral serosurveys to assess HIV risk behaviors among community-recruited MSM, injection drug
users and heterosexuals at risk for HIV.
Contact: ikuo@gwu.edu
Shannon M. Monnat, PhD
Shannon M. Monnat is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She
received her PhD in sociology from University at Albany, State University of New York in 2008. Her
research spans several subfields within the disciplines of sociology and public health, including
demography, racial and ethnic relations, health disparities, social stratification and mobility, and public
policy. Broadly speaking, her research interests can be categorized into two interrelated areas: 1) the
relationships between public policy and social, economic, and health outcomes, and 2) social
determinants of health and well-being. Her publications and works in progress consider the role of
race/ethnicity on welfare outcomes, trends in the distribution of income in the U.S., race- and place-based
differences in health care utilization and health outcomes, and early-life determinants of adult health. All
of her projects reflect the view that social structural inequalities have multiple implications for social,
economic, and environmental sustainability.
Contact: Shannon.Monnat@unlv.edu
Victoria D. Ojeda, MPH, PhD
Victoria D. Ojeda is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Global Public Health in the Department of
Medicine at University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Her research focuses on the health of
underserved and vulnerable populations, including immigrants, Latinos, and women. She has published
on health services issues including access to health insurance coverage, utilization of health and mental
health services, and the financing of mental health care. Prior research also includes international
collaborations with investigators in Mexico and the Netherlands. Dr. Ojeda’s current research focuses on
substance use, HIV/AIDS, and mental health comorbidities, with a focus on migrant populations, including
deportees, injection drug users and female sex workers. She is the principal investigator (PI) of a
National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) K01 Career Development award which focuses on the
intersection of substance use, HIV, and migration in female sex workers in Tijuana, Mexico. She also
recently led a study funded by the California HIV/AIDS Research Program (CHRP) that examined the
relationship between deportation and substance use and HIV risk behaviors in a cohort of Mexican male
injection drug users who were deported from the U.S. Lastly, Dr. Ojeda is the PI of a qualitative study
investigating the life and substance use histories of males and females who were deported from the U.S.
and potential factors that may elevate participants’ risk for HIV.
Contact: vojeda@ucsd.edu
Gregory Pappas, MD, PhD
Gregory Pappas serves as Senior Deputy Director of the HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD, and TB
Administration for the District of Columbia, Department of Public Health. He received his MD and PhD
degrees from Case Western Reserve. For the US Department of Health and Human Services Dr.
Pappas directed the Office of International Health and served as Senior Policy Advisor to Surgeon
General David Satcher, helping launch The National Coalitions to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Disparities
in Health. Dr. Pappas was a major author on the Five Year Strategy for PEPFAR: a Report to
Congress. He has twenty-five years of experience in global health and has worked in over 30
countries. Working with AIDSRelief he helped roll out antiretrovirals in seven countries in Africa and the
Caribbean. He served as Chairman of the Department of Community Health Science in the School of
Medicine at the Aga Khan University in Karachi. Before joining District Government he was Medical
Advisor to the National Association of People Living with AIDS and on the Board of the National Medical
Holding of Kazakhstan. Dr. Pappas is author to numerous scientific articles and books including the
recently “Megacities and Global Health” with the American Public Health Association Press. He has
served for many years as a voluntary physician in clinics for the underserved in the District of Columbia.
Contact: gregory.pappas@dc.gov
Jayesh Rathod, JD
Jayesh Rathod is an Assistant Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. His
areas of expertise and scholarly interests include immigrants’ rights, labor and employment, occupational
safety and health, and the intersection of law and organizing. Prior to joining the faculty, he was a Staff
Attorney at CASA of Maryland, representing low-wage immigrant workers on employment law and
immigration matters, and participating in worker education, organizing, and advocacy efforts. He also
practiced in the litigation section at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering LLP, and was law clerk to the Honorable
Louis F. Oberdorfer, of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Over the course of his
career, he has worked with numerous non-governmental organizations to advance the civil and human
rights of communities in the United States and abroad.
Contact: jrathod@wcl.american.edu
Laura Tach, PhD
Laura Tach is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell
University. Before arriving at Cornell, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society
Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Laura is a sociologist who studies the
consequences of neighborhood inequality and housing policy for individual and collective well-being. She
received her M.A. in sociology and her Ph.D. in social policy from Harvard University. Laura’s dissertation
examined the social consequences of housing policies that deconcentrate poverty by replacing public
housing projects with mixed-income developments. Her current projects use a variety of methods –
quantitative and spatial analyses of secondary datasets, archival research on neighborhoods, and indepth interviews with residents – to examine the social and health dynamics of economic inequality within
and between neighborhoods. She has also studied the causes and consequences of complex family
structures.
Contact: lauratach@cornell.edu
James C. Thomas, MPH, PhD
James C. Thomas is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public
Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also Deputy Director of the USAID-funded
MEASURE Evaluation Project, which is part of the Carolina Population Center. His principal area of
research is the social epidemiology of HIV/AIDS. Before beginning work at MEASURE, Dr. Thomas
researched the unintended consequences of high rates of incarceration. As Deputy Director of
MEASURE Evaluation he oversees the Project’s global efforts to enable countries to implement evidencebased programs and policies addressing the HIV epidemic. His current research is on inter-organizational
disease control networks in Ethiopia and the relation between women’s property rights and their risk of
HIV infection in East Africa.
Contact: jim.thomas@unc.edu Christopher Wildeman, PhD
Christopher Wildeman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Research
on Inequalities and the Life Course (CIQLE), and a resident fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy
Studies (ISPS) at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from Princeton
University in 2008. As a graduate student, his research received the Dorothy S. Thomas Award from the
Population Association of America and graduate student paper awards from three sections of the
American Sociological Association. From 2008-2010, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health
& Society Scholar and postdoctoral affiliate in the Population Studies Center (PSC) at the University of
Michigan. His research and teaching interests revolve around the consequences of mass imprisonment
for inequality, with emphasis on families, health, and children. He is also interested in child welfare more
broadly, especially as relates to child abuse and the foster care system. Some of his current research
considers the effects of parental incarceration on child homelessness, the consequences of mass
imprisonment for population health and health inequities, the implications of mass imprisonment for
inequality among children, and changes in the cumulative risk of foster care placement for children.
These projects have been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Center for
Marriage and Family Research at Bowling Green State University, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
the Russell Sage Foundation, and the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research.
Contact: christopher.wildeman@yale.edu
Luis H. Zayas, PhD
Luis H. Zayas is the Dean of the School of Social Work and Centennial Professor in Leadership at The
University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he was the Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor of
Social Work, Professor of Psychiatry, and founding director of the Center for Latino Family Research at
Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Zayas holds a master’s in social work degree and a Ph.D. in
developmental psychology from Columbia University. His clinical and research experiences have
focused on Hispanic and other minority families and their children, and the cultural basis of parenting and
improving parenting practices. His book, Latinas Attempting Suicide: When Cultures, Families, and
Daughters Collide (Oxford, 2011), presents original findings from his research. Presently, Dr. Zayas is
conducting a study, funded by NICHD, on the mental health of U.S. citizen-children whose parents are
deported to Mexico. He is involved in advocacy for citizen-children and has testified extensively in
immigration court. Dr. Zayas is the recipient of the Economic and Cultural Diversity Award from the
American Family Therapy Academy (1993) and the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award from the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University (2004-2005).
Contact: lzayas@austin.utexas.edu