Scholars Address HIV/AIDS

DiClemente, NHS Dean Bette Keltner, and Wingood

Ralph DiClemente and Gina Wingood—both public health experts from Emory University—spoke in Riggs Library on Wednesday, May 30, as part of an event hosted by The Linda and Timothy O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

DiClemente and Wingood addressed, “Promoting the Health of African American Youth: Reducing the Risk of STDs, Pregnancy, and HIV.

“We are very privileged to have both of you here today because you are towering figures in your area of behavioral sciences research,” said Bernhard Liese, chair of the NHS Department of International Health and acting center director of the O’Neill Institute’s Center for Disease Prevention and Health Outcomes.

“Every day we hope for a vaccine,” said DiClemente, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Public Health at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health and associate director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research.

“Every day, we’re disappointed,” he said. “There is no vaccine. …The virus is very elusive. In the absence of a vaccine, prevention is our AIDS vaccine at the moment.”

At the event, DiClemente and Wingood discussed their research, including the projects “SISTA,” that focuses on African American women at risk for HIV; “WILLOW,” that centers on HIV-positive women, and “SiHLE,” that looks at African American female teens at risk for HIV.

The two have regularly reported their findings in The Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Public Health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have chosen to disseminate three of their evidence-based interventions. They have extended their research around the globe to South Africa and St. Martin.

“We think our work has critically important implications for social justice,” said Wingood, associate professor and director of graduate studies of behavioral science and health education at Rollins.

“We love the work that we do,” Wingood said. “We’re passionate about it.”

The O’Neill Institute was co-founded by Georgetown University Law Center and the School of Nursing & Health Studies.