Professor Gina Wingood
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MAJOR PROJECTS THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON AND IDEAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH?
I am passionate about improving access to public health programs for ethnic minority women and girls. As such, my research highlights HIV prevention programs for women and girls that frame and place in context, the social conditions that give plight to their social and sexual vulnerability. A major emphasis of this research is enhancing the dissemination and adoption of my evidence-based HIV interventions locally, nationally and globally. My interventions have been amongst the most widely adopted and disseminated HIV prevention interventions for women and girls in the U.S. and, have been implemented in domestic violence shelters, faith-based institutions, health departments, community-based organizations, women’s clinics, and detention facilities. My future research involves examining factors indicative of successful aging among women living with HIV.
WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF THE MAJOR PROJECTS IN THE LERNER CENTER, AND WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING IN THE FUTURE?
As Director of the Lerner Center, I am excited to say that the Center has grown dramatically since its inception. The Center has hosted several successful national Turning the Tide Conferences. These conferences feature advances and innovations in health communications and health promotion research. These conferences were attended to by over 200 faculty representing 35 different academic institutions and 35 private agencies. We just published a special supplement in the American Journal of Public Health, featuring the conference presentations. As the Lerner Center is the hub of the Health Communication and Health Promotion certificates, the Center offered a course on Digital Storytelling to students in these two certificates. Digital stories are short, first-person narrative stories, combining voice, still and moving images, music or other sounds. Anyone can be a digital storyteller if they wish to share their experience, ideas feelings by using a story. Students in the class wrote about “a decisive moment in their life; a time they felt that they choose the right path or wish you had chosen a different path; an important time they stood up for themselves or for someone else, an experience that left a scar on them either one you cannot see. The Center also held a local conference on communicating public health data more effectively using Digital Visualization. The majority of conference attendees were MSPH faculty, however, professionals from NYC Department of Health and MSPH students were also in attendance. As a result of the highly successful Digital Storytelling class and the Digital Visualization conference, we will be offering these creative public health programs next year. Naturally, the Center promotes Meatless Monday and the Monday Campaigns. The Center is proud to say that the New York City public school system will be adopting Meatless Monday starting in 2020. Additionally, the Center will continue to offer diverse health promotion opportunities, such as the service-learning trip that supported MSPH student’s participation on an inter-professional team, involving the schools of Social Work, Nursing, Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. I am also the Director, of the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD), a program designed to enhance research and professional development for underrepresented doctoral students. I am excited to collaborate with the other PIs, in welcoming our new cohort of MSPH doctoral students.
WHAT MIGHT YOUR STUDENTS AND COLLEAGUES NOT KNOW ABOUT YOU?
Growing up and going to school in Massachusetts, I have a strong New England identity. I live in Connecticut and routinely take 20-mile bike rides along the Long Island Sound. I love the freedom of biking and find riding along the ocean completely refreshing. I enjoy being the mother of two daughters, 7 and 14 years of age. They keep me young and active, this summer we will go to Newport, Rhode Island, where my girls enjoy surfing. I also enjoy gardening, and I recently planted annuals and this year we look forward towards starting an herb garden. My husband is a professor and Dean of Public Health Innovation at NYU School of Global Public Health, so we often have exciting discussions on the future of public health.