Events

HIV treatment is changing with the advent of long-acting antiretroviral therapy (ART), with long-acting cabotegravir and rilpivirine approved as a combination regimen in 2021. However, the clinical trials of long-acting CAB/RPV only studied the combination in participants who were virologically suppressed on oral ART. The Ward 86 HIV Clinic in San Francisco serves a publicly-insured population with high rates of substance use, marginal housing and mental illness; we provided long-acting ART to our patients, even with ongoing viremia off oral ART, the program demonstrated good outcomes. We will review clinical outcomes and implementation strategies for the program. Long-acting ART may be a game changer for vulnerable populations, such as substance users, and needs greater exploration in adherence-challenged patients.

Monica Gandhi MD, MPH is a Professor of Medicine and Associate Chief in the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is also the Director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and the Medical Director of the HIV Clinic (“Ward 86”) at San Francisco General Hospital. She serves as the Associate Program Director of the ID fellowship at UCSF. Her research focuses on HIV treatment and prevention optimization, HIV and women, adherence measurement in HIV and TB, adherence interventions, and the interplay between COVID-19 and HIV. She served as the Co-Chair of the International AIDS Conference in San Francisco/Oakland in 2020 and has recently worked on COVID-19 mitigation and vaccination strategies, with a book on the COVID-19 pandemic (called “Endemic: A Post Pandemic Playbook”) coming out from Mayo Clinic Press in 2023.

Katerina Christopoulos, MD, MPH, is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of HIV, ID, and Global Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital, UCSF, and co-director of the clinical core of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research. She is a standing member of the NIH Population and Public Health Approaches to HIV study section. Her research program focuses on improving engagement in care and treatment for urban underserved people living with HIV. Her current R01 funded work includes studies evaluating the implementation of long-acting injectable antiretroviral therapy in three clinics in the U.S. and scaling up low-barrier drop in and mobile care for those experiencing homelessness, substance use, and mental illness.

People who use drugs experience multiple, interlocking forms of interpersonal and structural discrimination. Researchers are increasingly seeking to apply intersectional approaches to study the health impacts of discrimination but grapple with conceptual, practical, and analytic challenges. In this talk, Dr. Scheim will discuss strategies for incorporating intersectionality in scale development and validation, data collection, and analysis for studies on interpersonal discrimination.

Ayden Scheim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health in Philadelphia. Dr. Scheim is a social epidemiologist who works with populations confronting stigma and oppression to understand and address the health impacts of inequitable social, policy, and healthcare environments. He co-developed the Intersectional Discrimination Index (InDI) to measure experiences of interpersonal discrimination along multiple axes of social identity and position in population health research. He is PI of a NIMHD-funded study to cognitively and psychometrically evaluate the InDI measures among English- and Spanish-speaking U.S. adults.

Link to Video.

In this presentation, Dr. Rodriguez-Diaz will share experiences conducting community-centered research that has supported the development of culturally congruent interventions. He will also share strategies to develop community-engaged research and challenge structures/systems of oppression causing health inequities.

Carlos E. Rodriguez-Diaz is a native of Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaker, and an experienced bilingual-bicultural researcher with a background in community health. He conducts community-based participatory research in Puerto Rico, the United States of America, and the Caribbean Region. His work has focused on health equity through actions on the social determinants of health. He has led several programs and research projects addressing health inequities among populations made socially vulnerable, including people with HIV, Hispanic/Latinxs, incarcerated populations, and sexual and gender minority groups. He has several funded projects to develop interventions to enhance HIV prevention services, improve primary care for Latinx and transgender populations, and improve continuity of care for justice-involved people.

Dr. Rodriguez-Diaz is the first author of one of the most cited publications about the risk for COVID-19 infection and death among Latinos in the United States. In addition, he is an academic activist and committed mentor. His research and scholarship have led to coverage in well-known national and international media sources such as the Washington Post, The Hill, The Guardian, El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico), El Mercurio (Chile), and Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil), as well as in research publications and conferences. (Some of these links may have paywalls)

Link to Video.

Learning objectives for the presentation:

• To understand how the overdose epidemic has evolved, and how addiction services are organized and utilized in New York
• To understand how three key guiding principles—harm reduction, data-driven approach, and equity—are prioritized and implemented in addiction services across New York
• To get an update on initiatives and priorities at the NYS Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS)

Chinazo Cunningham is a physician, researcher, and public health professional who brings over 20 years of expertise in substance use treatment to OASAS. Prior to joining OASAS, she served as the Executive Deputy Commissioner of Mental Hygiene at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, was a practicing physician at Montefiore Health System, and a Professor of Medicine, Family and Social Medicine, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Dr. Cunningham has more than 20 years’ experience in research, care, and program-development that focuses on people who use drugs. She has also partnered with community-based organizations to develop pioneering programs to promote the health of this population. Dr. Cunningham led one of the first clinics in New York City to integrate buprenorphine into primary care. She has trained hundreds of doctors to treat substance use disorders in primary care. She has also led several research studies and published numerous research articles that focus on treating substance use disorders.

This talk will discuss the structural roots of intersectionality as well as the challenges and opportunities for conceptualizing, measuring, and addressing the multiple intersecting forms of structural discrimination that shape health inequities in the U.S.

Madina Agénor ScD, MPH is Assistant Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Center for Health Promotion and Health Equity at Brown University School of Public Health. She is also Adjunct Faculty at The Fenway Institute and leads the Sexual Health and Reproductive Experiences (SHARE) Lab at Brown University. As a social epidemiologist, Dr. Agénor investigates the structural and social determinants of health inequities related to sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and gender identity using an intersectional lens and mixed-methods research approach. Using quantitative and qualitative research methods, she examines how multilevel social, economic, health care, and policy factors shape sexual and reproductive health among diverse marginalized sexual orientation, racial/ethnic, and gender identity groups in the U.S. Her current research investigates how intersecting forms of structural, institutional, and interpersonal discrimination, including racism, heterosexism, sexism, and cisgenderism, differentially and simultaneously influence sexual and reproductive health among multiply marginalized U.S. populations, especially Black and Latina women, sexual minoritized women, and transgender and nonbinary people of color. Dr. Agénor completed postdoctoral research training in cancer prevention equity at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and was Visiting Research Faculty at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University. She holds a Doctor of Science (ScD) in Social and Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Women, Gender, and Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and a bachelor’s degree (AB, magna cum laude with Honors) in Community Health and Gender Studies from Brown University.

Link to Video.

The population size of people who inject drugs (PWID) has likely increased during the second and third waves of the U.S. opioid crisis. Estimating the number of people who currently inject drugs is a difficult but critical step toward adequate resource allocation for health and harm reduction services. In this presentation, Dr. Bradley will present her team’s recent work to estimate PWID population size as well as follow-up on work to improve the health of PWID in the pandemic era.

Heather Bradley is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Emory Rollins School of Public Health. She is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose main research interests include surveillance methodology, racial disparities in HIV and hepatitis C infections, and the intersection of infectious diseases with the U.S. opioid epidemic. During the past few years, her research has focused largely on racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes. She previously served on the faculty at Georgia State University School of Public Health. Prior to that appointment, Dr. Bradley spent eight years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in positions ranging from Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer to Associate Chief for Science in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention.

Link to Video.

Even as the overdose crisis has facilitated the expansion of overdose-focused interventions, considerably less attention has been paid to how their implementation and effectiveness is shaped by conditions of austerity and how people who use drugs are collectively responding to the crisis within this context. In Vancouver, Canada’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, the epicenter of the country’s overdose crisis, the everyday lives of people who use drugs are framed by the need to navigate survival and ward off ‘dopesickness’ amidst the unrelenting structural violence of economic precarity, gentrification, and drug criminalization—all of which have amplified overdose risks as fentanyl has replaced heroin within the illicit drug supply. Following the declaration of a public health emergency in British Columbia, Canada, low-threshold supervised consumption sites, termed ‘Overdose Prevention Sites’, were rapidly implemented in the neighbourhood beginning in December 2016. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in the neighbourhood and within overdose prevention sites, as well as in-depth interviews with people who use drugs, this talk examines how the implementation of overdose prevention sites represented a ‘good enough’ emergency response to the overdose crisis under conditions of decades-long provincial austerity while largely failing to address its social-structural drivers. Although critical in reducing overdose mortality, this talk discusses how the shifting drug supply exposed limitations of overdose-focused interventions while necessitating new logics of ‘community care’ among structurally vulnerable people who use drugs trying to survive the crisis. Finally, this talk considers the implications for the response to overdoses in North America, emphasizing the need for structural changes, including drug decriminalization and safe supply, to work in tandem with grassroots mobilization to more fully respond to this crisis.

Ryan McNeil is Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Harm Reduction Research, Program in Addiction Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. Through community-engaged qualitative and ethnographic research, he examines how forces operating within the risk environments of people who use drugs shape risk and harm. Dr. McNeil is Principal Investigator of multiple grants examining: (1) social, structural, and environmental influences on the implementation and effectiveness of harm reduction and addiction treatment interventions, including supervised consumption services; (2) the influence of housing and housing-based interventions on overdose-related risks; (3) approaches to the management of stimulant use disorders. His foundational research on harm reduction approaches, including supervised consumption services and safe supply, has been instrumental to informing their scale-up.

Pursuant to the goal of meaningfully involving people who use drugs in all stages of the research process, he actively collaborates with community-based organizations, including peer-driven drug user, sex worker, and tenant rights organizations, to align his research with community priorities and provide opportunities for people with lived experience to co-lead and engage in research. Dr. McNeil is the co-creator and scientific lead of Crackdown, a podcast launched to mobilize research and amplify the voices of people who use drugs. This innovative media collaboration has been called the “podcast most likely to save lives” and has received the Radio Impact Award from the Third Coast International Audio Festival, Canadian Hillman Prize, and a silver medal from the New York Festivals Radio Awards.

Link to Video.

Is Mpox in our rear view mirror? Taking a look back, how have things changed? In this talk, Christian Grov will be presenting data collected during enrollment for AMETHST (The American Transformative HIV Study). Sexual and gender minority participants were recruited to complete a cross-sectional survey via geosocial networking apps starting in August 2022. We report on responses collected through November (n = 8,551). The focus will be to examine how responses changed over time, including sexual behavior and harm reduction strategies, Mpox vaccine uptake, and behavior change following vaccination.

Dr. Christian Grov’s research centers on the health of sexual and gender minority individuals. His work has explored substance use, sexual compulsivity, venues where individuals meet sex partners, sex work, HIV/STI prevention, and HIV care. His studies have been supported by both the NIH and CDC. He has co-authored 200+ peer-reviewed articles, as well as several book chapters. He co-wrote In the Company of Men: Inside the Lives of Male Prostitutes (Praeger), and co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society. Dr. Grov serves as a standing member of the NIH’s HIV/AIDS Intra- and Inter-personal Determinants and Behavioral Interventions (HIBI) Study Section (2020 – 2024) an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sex Research (2017 – Present), and on the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed journals. He previously served as Editor-in-Chief of Sexuality Research and Social Policy, a member of the NYC Department of Health’s HIV Prevention Planning Group as well as on the Board of Directors of HOOK, a non-profit dedicated to improving the health and well-being of men who are involved in sex work. Collectively, Dr. Grov’s body of work seeks to inform HIV and STI prevention, education, and health policy.

Link to Video. 

Synopsis – Drawing from two community based, qualitative studies of safer supply programs in Ontario, Canada, this presentation will focus on the role safer supply programs may play in overdose crisis response, program implementation designs, and implementation successes, challenges and perceived outcomes from the perspective of people enrolled in the programs, physicians and nurses who prescribe safer supply, dispensing pharmacists, and the nurses, counsellors, navigators who support the programs.

Carol Strike, PhD is the Associate Dean and Professor, Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. Her research program aims to improve health services for people who use drugs.  Currently, she is studying the implementation and outcomes of safer supply programs, remote supervision of drug consumption and the design of gender-inclusive supervised injection. She is the author of many peer-reviewed publications, reports such as the Best Practice Recommendations for Canadian Programs that provide harm reduction supplies to people who use drugs and are at risk of HIV, HCV and other Harms: 2021 (https://www.catie.ca/best-practice-recommendations-for-canadian-harm-reduction-programs), recent youtube videos  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbUwb-pszW4)  and comic books (https://zenodo.org/record/5593146) .

Link to Video.

In this talk, Dr. Carrico and Dr. Riley will describe the epidemiology of stimulant use in people living with or at risk for HIV, discuss research on the cardiovascular and HIV-related consequences of stimulant use, discuss possible clinical applications of the existing evidence, and explore future directions in research.

Adam Carrico is a clinical-health psychologist and Professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. His clinical research program has focused extensively on boosting and extending the effectiveness of contingency management for HIV/AIDS prevention in people who use stimulants. Dr. Carrico’s bio-behavioral research examines the mechanisms whereby methamphetamine and other stimulant use alter key biological processes relevant to HIV acquisition as well as HIV pathogenesis.

Elise Riley is a Professor and Epidemiologist in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Her clinical and community-based research focuses on co-morbidities and competing risks in homeless and unstably housed individuals, with an emphasis on the consequences of stimulant use and associated conditions. The aim of her work is to provide clinical tools for risk assessment in order to reduce morbidity and mortality in very low-income populations.

Link to Video.

In this special panel presentation our presenters will discuss their path to R01 funding. They will talk about time management for developing their applications, helpful supports, how they obtained data for preliminary studies, and their plans for subsequent R01 applications.

Kelly Doran, MD, MHS – NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Omar El-Shahawy, MD, MPH, PhD – NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Justin Knox, PhD – Columbia University
Joseph Palamar, PhD, MPH – NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Moderator: Dustin Duncan, ScD – Columbia University
Guest Speaker: Stacie Grossman Bloom, PhD, New York University

Link to Video. 

When monkeypox (MPV) began spreading rapidly in countries across the world during the spring and summer of 2022, public health departments on all jurisdictional levels – still engaged in combatting COVID-19 and other pressing health concerns – quickly pulled together policy and programmatic responses to understand and slow the spread of the outbreak. While typically self-limiting and non-lethal, the current outbreak of MPV has significant implications for HIV and other STI response efforts, both in terms of communities affected as well as severity of illness. This presentation will provide an overview of the response infrastructure and implementation in New York State; discuss MPV’s impact as it relates to HIV, STIs, and drug use; and explore the implications of these connections for policy and programming as we grapple with a new, potentially endemic sexually-associated infection.

Samuel Meyer, MPH serves as Executive Office Coordinator at the New York State Department of Health’s AIDS Institute, contributing to the AIDS Institute’s policy activities, program planning and implementation, and special projects including the Department of Health’s response to the developing monkeypox (MPV) outbreak. Sam previously served in the Department of Health’s Office of the Commissioner beginning in 2019, most recently as Special Assistant to the Commissioner. In the Commissioner’s Office he provided support to senior Department leadership and contributed to various programming initiatives throughout the Department’s response to COVID-19.

Link to Video.

Panel discussion on NIH K applications. Hear advice from NIDA, NIMHD and NIAAA program officials, K-award recipients, and mentors.

Tatiana Balachova, PhD – NIAAA
Dorothy Castille, PhD – NIHMD
Richard Jenkins, PhD – NIDA

Amanda Bunting, PhD – NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Diana M. Sheehan, PhD – Florida International University
Skyler Jackson, PhD – Yale University
Justin Knox, PhD – Columbia University

Linda Collins, PhD – NYU School of Global Public Health
Silvia Martins, MD, PhD – Columbia University
Donna Shelley, MD, MPH – NYU School of Global Public Health

Link to Video

Sam Rivera will speak about OnPoint NYC’s diverse range of services. OnPoint NYC is dedicated to improving the health, safety, and well-being of marginalized people who use drugs or engage in sex work, their loved ones, and their communities. Their work addresses the intersection of stigma, policies, and practices that harm our participants. As the largest harm reduction service provider on the east coast, OnPoint NYC offers lifesaving safer drug use and overdose training to those who need it most. They also distribute and clean up more syringes and other paraphernalia than any other provider. Most recently, they opened the U.S.’s first two Overdose Prevention Centers which have been an incredible success, diverting public drug use, increasing participants’ connections to other wrap around services, and keeping our communities clean. Additionally, their innovative overdose prevention programs in Washington Heights, East Harlem, and the Bronx save hundreds of lives each year.

Sam Rivera has over 29 years of progressive experience in social services. His primary focus of expertise lies in Criminal Justice and Reentry, HIV/AIDS, Harm Reduction, Addiction/Recovery, and Mental Health. He currently serves as the Executive Director of OnPoint NYC, a harm reduction organization that provides services to active drug users and sex workers in Northern Manhattan and The South Bronx, many of whom are low-income or homeless as well as of color and LGBTQ.

Link to Video

There are now more medications available for the treatment of opioid use disorder than at any time in history, yet our current treatment structures appear inadequate to gain much traction in efforts to minimize the harms associated with the opioid epidemic in the US. National and local data will be presented to highlight some of the evolving challenges to treatment engagement along with thoughts on improving the access and acceptability of treatment.

David Metzger, PhD, is Research Professor and Director of the HIV Prevention Research Division in the Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He is Co-Director of the Penn Mental Health AIDS Research Center and directs its Developmental Core. He directs the Prevention Science and Community Engagement Core of the Penn Center for AIDS Research and co-directs the Prevention Research Site of the Philadelphia Clinical Trials Unit.

Dr. Metzger began conducting research on the efficacy of methadone treatment in 1978. Since 1987 his research has focused on HIV prevention among PWID and his work has helped to demonstrate the ability of medication assisted treatments to reduce the spread of HIV. He has led HIV prevention and treatment studies using medication assisted treatments for opiate injectors in Philadelphia, China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. A primary objective of his work has been to document the public health impact of substance use treatments. His current research involves testing mobile strategies for engaging people in medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder and its impact on individual and public health.

The Silver PhD Program Research Lecture Series (DPRLS), Office for Research, and Center for Drug Use and HIV Research (CDUHR) are pleased to present a special panel discussion on building a research career in social work, public health, and related fields. This discussion will center on issues and questions faced by early and mid-career scholars, but all are welcome to attend.

Charles Cleland, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Linda Collins, PhD
Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Biostatistics, NYU School of Global Public Health

Dustin Duncan, ScD
Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Marya Gwadz, PhD
Associate Dean for Research and Professor, NYU Silver School of Social Work

Michael Lindsey, PhD, MSW, MPH
Dean and Paulette Goddard Professor of Social Work, NYU Silver School of Social Work

Link to Video

Amidst increasing opioid and polysubstance use nationally,  HIV transmission among people who inject drugs (PWID) has impacted diverse regions of the United States, including rural, suburban, and urban areas. Novel HIV prevention strategies are needed. However, a decade after antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) was FDA-approved, levels of PrEP uptake among PWID lags far behind those of other at-risk groups. This talk will describe multilevel barriers to PrEP access, uptake, and adherence among U.S. PWID, highlight promising strategies being implemented in clinical and community settings, and explore ongoing intervention and implementation research seeking to improve PrEP delivery to and uptake among PWID.

Angela R. Bazzi, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor at UC San Diego’s Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. Her mixed methods research explores the social and structural determinants of infectious disease outcomes among people who use and inject drugs in the United States and globally. Dr. Bazzi currently leads intervention and implementation research studies seeking to improve access to HIV prevention and harm reduction services, including antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis, for people who use drugs. She teaches graduate coursework on substance use and population health and serves as an Associate Editor at Addiction Science & Clinical Practice and an Editorial Board Member at Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Link to Video

This talk on the global monkeypox public health emergency will focus on sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations and include a discussion on monkeypox epidemiology (e.g., current epidemiological trends both nationally and globally) as well as monkeypox prevention and treatment options (e.g., asking potential partners about monkeypox symptoms as well as vaccination) in general (i.e., non-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender [LGBT]) as well as LGBT (or SGM) populations. Given disparities in monkeypox infection and monkeypox vaccine uptake, especially among racial/ethnic minority men who have sex with men (MSM), who face intersectional stigma from their dually marginalized identities, Dr. Duncan will also discuss stigma as it relates to monkeypox in SGM populations broadly and SGM populations with intersectional identities in particular.

Dustin T. Duncan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, where he directs the Columbia Spatial Epidemiology Lab and co-directs the department’s Social and Spatial Epidemiology Unit. Dr. Duncan is a Social and Spatial Epidemiologist, studying how specific neighborhood characteristics influence population health and health disparities. His research has a strong domestic (U.S.) focus, but recent work is beginning to span across the globe (including studies in Paris and London). His research utilizes a geospatial lens to apply spatially explicit approaches such as computer-based geographic information systems (GIS), web-based geospatial technologies, real-time geospatial technologies, and geospatial modeling techniques. Dr. Duncan’s research appears in leading journals and he has over 175 publications and book chapters; his research has appeared in major media outlets including the US News and World Report, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Dr. Duncan’s recent work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Verizon Foundation, Aetna Foundation, and HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN).

Link to Video

Despite innovations in HIV prevention, HIV continues to persist among vulnerable and priority populations such as people who inject drugs (PWID), and Black and Latine sexual minority men (BLSMM). Interventions often focus on the individual-level or the population level, with less attention being given to the social network level despite the social network environment being a powerful impetus which can facilitate or restrict access to HIV prevention innovations. Homophily, the tendency for people to seek out those who are similar to themselves, is a phenomena which can begin to explain the diffusion of information and endorsement of network norms among PWID and BLSMM. This talk will describe how network norms influence individual-level behaviors for PWID and BLSMM, and identify how homophily can reduce or increase access to HIV prevention information and innovations within the social networks of BLSMM.

Cho-Hee Shrader (she/her) is a prevention scientist and NIH T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Global HIV Implementation Science program in ICAP at Columbia University (T32AI114398; PI: Howard). She is also affiliated with Dr. Dustin Duncan’s Spatial Epidemiology Lab at Columbia University. Dr. Shrader’s research explores how the intersection of implementation science, social networks, and neighborhood characteristics impacts minority health and health disparities, such as HIV vulnerability, mental health, and substance use disorder among sexual, gender, and racial/ethnic minority communities. Dr. Shrader leverages her previous experiences working in low resource community-based organizations to inform her research approach. Currently, her Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV pilot project examines the feasibility of a sociocentric network-based respondent driven sampling recruitment method for HIV prevention programming among Black, Latino, and Caribbean men who have sex with men and use drugs. Dr. Shrader received her PhD in Prevention Science and Community Health at the University of Miami School of Medicine (2021) which was funded by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the NIMHD. Her F31 award and dissertation explored how social networks and neighborhood determinants influenced Latine/x sexual minority men’s access to PrEP and PrEP-related information. Dr. Shrader received her MPH in Global Health from Emory University and completed her BS in Physiology at the University of Iowa and the University of Cape Town. She is also an HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health Implementation Research Institute (HIGH IRI) Fellow.