Gina M. Wingood, M.P.H., Sc.D. is Assistant Professor at Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health. She earned her MPH at the University of California, Berkeley in Maternal and Child Health and her ScD at the Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Health and Social Behavior. While at Harvard Dr. Wingood worked as a research assistant with Dr. Jonathan Mann on the book entitled, "AIDS in the World". She subsequently completed an internship in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Divisio n of HIV/STD, where she worked on designing and implementing a TMC-based community-level outreach intervention to promote adoption and maintenance of safer sex among high risk African American women.

Previously, she worked as a Research Scientist in the Multicultural Research Institute at the Bayview-Hunter's Point Foundation, an African American community-based organization. Her activities included developing a culturally appropriate, gender sens itive HIV risk reduction intervention for African American young adult women; training indigenous peer educators to implement the intervention; creating an intervention manual to assist in the implementation of the HIV risk reduction intervention; develo ping assessment instruments to assess high risk sexual practices among crack cocaine using populations; and serving as a community health educator.

Dr. Wingood is currently the Co-Principal Investigator on two randomized HIV-intervention trials funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The first seeks to reduce high-risk sexual behavior among female adolescents from an Adolescent Medicin e Clinic; the second seeks to reduce high risk sexual behaviors and enhance coping strategies of HIV-positive women. Both studies use biological markers to determine intervention efficacy. Dr. Wingood is also an Investigator on a CDC-funded study examin ing the efficacy of the female condom in preventing transmission of STD's and identifying social, cultural and gender-specific factors associated with its use.

An African American woman with extensive experience in designing and conducting HIV/STD prevention programs with African American populations at high-risk of HIV infection, Dr. Wingood has also examined the impact of abuse and media on women's sexual health. She has published numerous articles on the importance of utilizing gender-specific theories in HIV research tailored to women, and designing, implementing and evaluating culturally sensitive HIV sexual risk-reduction interventions for African Am erican women. She is currently preparing a book entitled, Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Return to Videoconference Agenda 

Return to the Minority Health Home Page 

Updated 4/12/2001vs minority_health@unc.edu