 So we'll get going, so I'd like to start properly, so my thought was that we start properly at 10 minutes after. So I should welcome folks, I'm Terence Blackman, I'm the Dean of our School of Science, Health and Technology, and I would like to, on behalf of our president and our provost, welcome you to this annual School of Science Hopping to Women's History and the Big Venetian Mass Lecture. I should say, first off, how I came to name this lecture, the Venetian Mass Lecture. In 2008, I was a five-college fellow at Mount Holywood College in Western Massachusetts, and driving on the campus, I noticed that there was a Venetian Mass House, and I had been a faculty member of the Venetian Mass for quite a long time, and the name of the Venetian Mass had been part of our faculty, and noted that we did not have a Venetian Mass House and Venetian Mass College. And so I thought that at some point in the future, whenever the opportunity presented itself, I would try to have something that memorialized the Venetian Mass in our comics for those of you who are young, perhaps not so aware of this Venetian Mass' life in our comics. And she's Dr. Venetian Mass. She is a faculty member here in the Department of Nursing and a very critical member in the development, senior administrator of the development of Venetian Mass College. And so I thought that this would be a small effort for the part of the School of Science to sort of honor Dr. Venetian Mass in the work that she'd done. Actually, the other thing which is sort of quite important is that for many years we had a large scholarship which was awarded at, it was the largest scholarship that was awarded at a graduation, quite a sum of money, and it was, this was money that was donated to the college by Dr. Venetian Mass. So it's that embitus that has led to us leaving the lecture with Dr. Venetian Mass lecture. I think I would say one more thing which is of importance. Many of you know I'm a mathematician by training, but I'm a scientist. And in a sense it's my primary identity. And so I really strongly believe that ideas matter. I really believe that, you know, in order to create opportunities you sort of have to generate ideas. And the universe is a place that is normally a place that generates ideas. And quite often, you know, people ask, well, what kinds of things will make, you know, what will kind of enrich a discipline? What kinds of things will help to generate new ideas? And so it seems as an African American was very obvious to me, and said, you know, new people generate new ideas. And so part of what you ought to be doing is to figure out how to enlarge a group of people who are participating in science. And so it has always been very odd to me that as a culture we have not in a very serious way thought about ways in which we engage a 50% of our population in the world of science, i.e., women. And so, you know, it gives me great pleasure to stand here there and to say, you know, in the school of science, in particular, where this is really, you know, one kind of data. I mean, for example, mathematics. 2019 is the first time that a woman has won what is considered the Nobel Prize in mathematics. It's from the very first time. So the thirst of women in science is really immense. So I would hope that, you know, my vision in the long-term, that Med Rivers College becomes a place where young women, particularly young women, can find the world of science, and kind of affirms their identity, and kind of leads them away, thinking about the big challenges for the society as it relates to things in science. And that's the spirit in which I want you to think of this event that we're a part of. Today we're really honored to have a wonderful guest who can talk to us about some very interesting things in science. And, you know, I don't mind that it's there, and I'm going to ask one of our students to kind of introduce us, and I'm going to ask them to support you. But I think that you will be, you know, pleasantly surprised to discover some nerdy black girl magic. And so I'm going to ask you to introduce her nerdy black girl magic. Thank you. So Dr. Taylor is currently, Dr. Tanya Taylor is a primary assistant professor in the School of Medicine at SUNY Baptist State. She earns a BA in International Relations and Political Science double major with a minor in Spanish Language and Literature from Boston University, and a master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a doctorate degree in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's of degree in Biostats. Clinical research method from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University her doctoral dissertation is entitled Healing Traum of Everyday Life Traditional Medicine HIV and AIDS in rural Zimbabwe. Dr. Taylor has been the recipient of a Career Development Award for her work from the National Institute of Mental Health and she has been a Butler-Williams father at the Institute on Agent Research. Her works reflect research interest in HIV and AIDS, HIV and agent, sexual and reproductive culture, health and treatment, seek and behaviors, comparative system of health and healing, HIV prevention, sexual risk behavior, and health is comparative. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together as we welcome Dr. Tanya Taylor. I hope you recognize yourself. Yes, I did. You just put out two of my slides, thank you. I want to thank my colleague for the why she joined us. She's one of your faculty here. Thank you. So what an honor to be invited to talk about for this Women's History lecture in honor of Dr. Betty Shubat. So the title of my talk today is Nerdy Black or Romantic, which I will try to break it down for you. And before we started, there were some folks who were in the room and I was just sort of sharing that I was really surprised when I googled Nerdy Black or Romantic that someone hadn't sort of taken it and sort of owned it, but apparently it's not out there. Maybe it's just something that I keep putting out there and maybe a collection of us will embrace it one day. So there are sort of two movements. One is the Black Girl Magic. And I think often, actually this is sort of separate in terms of the Black Girl Rocks sort of celebration. But Black Girl Magic was I think first coined in about 2013 by Sean Thompson to celebrate the beauty, palliative power and resilience of Black women. There was a little bit of backlash in terms of some people sort of feeling that it reinforced kind of this particular strong Black woman archetype. I don't necessarily buy that argument, but this is one particular sort of point in the evolution towards our understanding of Nerdy Black or Romantic. So it is a celebration of our beauty and our magic and our resilience. Then there's Black Girl Nerds, which is an online community that was started by Jimmy Burns for the Nets. And this was a site that basically tried to create a space in place to encourage young sisters, women of color, to basically embrace their nerdyness, their interest in technology and science and mathematics, et cetera. I found this kind of a little bit problematic in this little frame because there was this, at least this notion that sort of nerdyness was a bad thing. And I didn't want to lose the magic, and I felt like there was something about the magic that we have. So I really firmly believe that the nerdyness in magic leads to the bookkeeping sort of our identities as Black girls, Black women. So for me, I find that Black Girl Magic is celebrating our academic and scholarly achievements of women who are in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, et cetera. So, you know, today I'd like to celebrate Dr. Chavaz as Nerdy Black Girl Magic. I'd like to introduce you to some of the pioneers who really inspired me. Some individuals who are no longer with us, some individuals who I would love to meet, and the individual that I absolutely didn't meet who still didn't stay out in awe of. And then I'd like to sort of basically show you a little of my Nerdy Black Girl Magic. I just want to practice and say that this is not... Yes, I'm going to be emphasizing academic achievement because that's actually what Nerdy Black Girl Magic is about. It's about owning the fact that we can have scholarly and academic achievements. So it's going to seem like a lot of going through few books, credentials, and I do sometimes feel a little embarrassed about sort of my credentials because I... Well, no, in terms of because I'm an anthropologist and sometimes being that doctor in the room is actually a barrier to the work and so I sometimes just downplay it. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that, but I am absolutely proud of getting my double doctorate as well. Okay, so first and foremost, we need to talk about Dr. Betty Chavaz, who was the first director of the Institutional Advancement of Public Affairs here at the incredible institution. So Betty Chavaz, I guess, when she was living in Detroit, she was Betty Dean Standard. After high school, she went to pursue a degree in education at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but I think at least part of the research that I did, I think she was really discouraged, but I think that in your baseness about sort of racism and segregation in the South was a little bit daunting for her. And I think that she just sort of had to segue into something else. I think she really wanted to get out of Alabama. And she also started to think about changing sort of her path and wanted to pursue a nursing degree instead and she was encouraged by the Dean at the Institute in Alabama to basically come to an affiliate of the Tuskegee Institute. Are you guys still affiliated? I actually met the president of Tuskegee recently, in Washington, and we talked about some historical entities, but I had no idea that that was really true. I have a personal connection to the Tuskegee Institute. My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman, and so I think that that's a really important piece. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He had a hand in the establishment of the Red Room College. Oh, super different. So then Betty Dean came to Brooklyn State College of School of Nursing, which I don't know where that is. It's the right one here in Tuskegee. That's what I thought. I couldn't find anything, I'm just sort of like, it's a state college of nursing. It must be... That's what the King's County doesn't actually have a School of Nursing downstate though. So there's no link with this particular term that I thought, and so that is so cool. I'm going to talk to the president of downstate, because we need to emphasize that Dr. Shabab, because more than... I think it's some crazy statistic that more than 90% of the nurses in New York City are trained in SUNY downstate. It's a huge nursing program. And it actually also... A lot of the medical doctors who pass through that are here in New York are also trained here. In 1969, which was after her husband's assassination, she decided to go back to school and to finish her degree in education in New Jersey. And at the same time, I think she whipped it out in a year and then decided to get a master's in health administration along the way. I.e., her ordinary life romantic was full in effect. And then in 1975, she completed a doctorate in education at the University of Massachusetts in Ann Harst. A lot of this information was sort of alluded to here by your dean that she became an associate professor here in health sciences. In 1980, she was promoted to the Director of Institutional Advancement. She was in 1981, awarded full tenure. I'll talk about tenure later. In 1984, she was given a new title and held that position until her death. I wish I had known her. She's truly inspirational. I think it's a bit worse scholarship. And her ability to navigate both sort of the research realm as well as administration in terms of helping to make sure the next generation is prepared is incredible. So now I want to just sort of take a little moment to just sort of let you know about some of my pioneers. The truth is I didn't know about these ladies until recently and now I am thrilled and I read a lot about them. Their story is absolutely inspirational. How many people here have seen this film? If you haven't seen watched it on Netflix or whatever, it's a really really phenomenal story and to me I feel like this is one of the first times sort of in popular culture that we really see a full celebration of nerdy black girl magic. So the person here, this is Mary's, well actually I asked an usual slide, but they're actually not quite in order. I believe this character, this is this character, the person in the center and this is... So the first one that I'd like to talk to about is Mary Jackson, who was a mathematician and an engineer. Back before there were machine computers, there was the human computer and if you did see the film, you would understand sort of the concept of sort of the human computers but there were huge labs where these women were basically doing really complex like computations, et cetera and all with calculate. I mean it's really basic sort of stuff. It's really a phenomenal, phenomenal history. So before NASA there was something called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and so Mary Jackson worked there first as a human computer. But the thing that was really incredible about Mary Jackson is that she became NASA's first black female engineer. She studied at Hampton University where she received a BA in mathematics and she was a member of the Alpha Kappa Society. Unfortunately Mary Jackson died in 2005 and her legacy continues. She's the first black female engineer. Ms. Catherine Johnson, who God willing in August will be, I think, 101 in mathematician and her story was a really incredible story. Graduated from high school at the age of 14, entered Virginia State College. She graduated so much from Laude with degrees in mathematics in French at the age of 18. This is some serious nerdy black girl magic. You don't get to graduate so much from Laude unless you are absolutely an exceptional student. She along with her colleagues was a human computer but her claims of fame in terms of sort of her major contribution in terms of the science is that she was the individual who calculated the actual trajectory in terms of that enabled sort of the man's spacecraft to be able to come back into orbit. So Alan Shepard and John Lynn, who are the two astronauts that she helped to calculate their trajectory, were alive and were able to complete their missions because of Catherine Johnson. She was honestly honored by President Obama in 2015 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 2018 William & Mary gave her an honorary doctrine. What it emphasizes, all three of these ladies should have had a doctrine if they lived in a different time and place to be able to allow them to pursue their advanced studies. So I'm really happy that she was a big talent for that accomplishment. And then Dorothy Johnson Vaughn, who I think was an extremely clever individual who was also a human calculator, she graduated from a Wilbur first Wilbur Force University in 1929 and she basically worked everywhere at NACA, NASA, at the Langley Research Center and in 1949 she became the first supervisor of the Western Area computers. And what I really appreciate about her story is that she had the foresight when there was a transition in terms of moving into the mechanical machine that she was smart enough to figure out to get ahead of the curve and basically taught herself this really complicated sort of computer programming and was basically the only person to be able to do it. And to say they've been, and she also taught her supervisor the people she was supervising and to sort of extent kind of insured her job and her sort of relevance in moving forward with the technology smartly. I want to tell you about two new chemists. I think chemistry is a really important field of science that is often not pursued by women of color and I feel it's important to highlight chemists. This particular chemist has a local story. So she was born in Queens from an immigrant British-Western-East family that was all about promoting education. She earned a B.F. in Masters in Chemistry in Queens College and at New York University and 47 she completed her Ph.D. in Chemistry at Columbia University. She was the first African-American woman to obtain a Ph.D. in Chemistry in the United States. Okay? In the whole U.S. But what is really important is the legacy of her research. In 55 she returned to Columbia with Dr. Deming basically studying sort of the causes of heart attacks and it basically is because of her research and their pioneering research that we really started to understand the connection between food and diet and heart health. And it's because of her that we understand that. And it's amazing. And she was a local well, in our Caribbean sort of community as a local product. I want to include this because I feel like this is one of the saddest stories in terms of sort of black-norded, black-aromagic. Alice Ball was born in 1892. She developed an incredibly innovative method to help treat leprosy which was known as the ball method. It actually included a little bit of herbal remedies used in India and China. She tragically died in a lab accident where she inhaled some really toxic fumes that she later could come to. But what's really sad is that the president of the college in Hawaii claimed her research. So Alice Ball, first of all, she was the first African-American woman to graduate from the master's in chemistry. Not a doctor, but she's the first master in chemistry and also the first instructor, female and black instructor in chemistry in Hawaii. So this predictable president claimed her work in it. As always, truth will come to light and she was finally recognized for her work in Hawaii. There's a plaque commemorating it. There's an actual on Alice Ball Day the former lieutenant governor created and she was given the medal of the station. It's a sad story, but it's also a story that's all common in terms of black female or just female excellence in the fact that there was a time period where women's scholarship was claimed by their male colleagues. We no longer live in that point, but that's a cautionary tale in the fact that it's a certain extent there is still an inherent gender bias within science and that is black women working in science. We need to be always cognizant of the fact that this is my stuff and to make sure that we protect our stuff. Love Dr. Jocelyn Elders. I wish I could have met her. I hope maybe one day I will be able to. This is one of my heroes. She is from Arkansas. She obtained her medical doctorate from Arkansas Medical School in 1960 and a master's in biochemistry in 1967. She became the first person in the state of Arkansas to receive board certification as a pediatric endocrinologist. The first in the entire state. In 87 she became the head of the Department of Health in Arkansas appointed by Betty Governor Phil Clinton and in 1993 President Phil Clinton appointed her to be the U.S. surgeon general. She was the first African American woman or African American and the second woman to hold that position. She was unfortunately sort of forced to resign because I think actually she was doing the right thing. She was very open about talking about sexual health and and I think that sort of in that particular time we were still and we still struggle in our society to talk about sexuality and sexual health but I think she's phenomenal and she's one of my pioneers in terms of sexual health and research. I love this woman. Most of me because I do research on sickle cell disease and I just want to highlight that very styles and apparently according to the biography was all about very black romantic a long time ago. She has a doctorate in molecular biology and genetics and she received this in 1975. She's probably like one of the first you know I mean it's such a very specialized field and for her to pursue the doctorate at that particular point is really incredible but what is also incredible is to step away from lab work and to actually take on an administrative position as the executive director of the Sickle Cell Foundation in Georgia and I think there she has done incredible service in terms of leveraging her position and her research to be able to raise awareness around sickle cell disease which if you don't know is a horrific disease that really affects people of African descent. I would love to meet Dr. May Jensen she is incredible and I just want to highlight some of her neuro-magic I'm not a scientist but I'm sorry an astronaut she has a bachelor's in science and chemical engineering from Stanford went to Cornell for med school and while she was doing all this I somehow found time to study in Cuba and Kenya and volunteer in the refugee camp in Cambodia and Thailand after her residency in internal medicine she then became the Peace Corps Medical Officer for Sierra Leone in Liberia I think she was there for two years and when she came back in 1985 she decided to pursue her dream to become an astronaut and we all know that Dr. Jensen was the first African American female astronaut ever and the first African American woman in space ever aboard the endeavor and I would love to one day meet her Dr. Helene Gale if there is one person that I would absolutely say is inspirational to me is Dr. Helene Gale but I really wanted to put Dr. CEO and just basically I don't know if he's sort of like ex-motus here but she is phenomenal I met Dr. Gale when she was giving a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania which is where she actually received her medical degree and I know of Dr. Gale because of the work that she's done in HIV Dr. Gale is right now she's the CEO of an organization Chicago Community Trust which is basically about helping the folks in Chicago and the president and CEO of numerous organizations including CARE for over 10 years director of the HIV TV and we've conducted health programs for Bill and Melinda Foundation she was at the CDC for 20 years focusing on HIV and she was the chair of Obama's presidential advisory council on HIV which was suddenly suspended and then I want to conclude with the one individual for me I think is the spark for minority black girl magic and that is Zora Neale Hurston who I hope that you all should know about. Most people know her in terms of her literature is a novelist but Zora Neale Hurston was the first anthropologist, black female anthropologist and folklorist I have a joint PHD in anthropology and folklor and she was my role model. She she actually did study at Howard University and then came to Barnard she has a bachelor's in anthropology she worked with some of the pioneers, the absolute pioneers in the American School of Anthropology, Fran Boas Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict Crazy and she has been my inspiration. So I'm going to tell you about minority black girl magic which basically is intersecting with medical anthropology and public health. I don't have to go through this this is a historical introduction but basically I just want to highlight the fact that I am a social scientist and a behavioral scientist although I have my entire life been also interested in sort of the hard sciences and I in my own quiet way have although I don't have a science degree I am a complete nerd about science and medicine and maybe one day my husband worked in me and I started getting a clinical degree What's a medical anthropology? So cool, thank you I had a whole bunch of slides to sort of talk about anthropology and I thought that that might be too much but this gives me a great opportunity Do folks know about anthropology? Anthropology is one of the key social sciences and it's a sister science of sociology. Anthropology and sociology do basically the same thing Sociology is sort of starting point in society, anthropology starting point is culture Anthropology, the American School of Anthropology has four sub-fields There is physical or biological There is cultural Anthropology, there is linguistic Anthropology because we are and the endeavor is all about humans so we are the so we are the only species that has an open system of communication so that's linguistic anthropology and the four sub-field is archaeology I cover technically three out of four sub-fields, I do everything in the dirt but maybe one day I will Medical anthropology is subsumed under physical and biological If there's one thing that is common in human history is that we have all gotten sick and that our communities and societies have developed ways of coping with sickness and disease so the crux of medical anthropology is basically looking at how societies and communities frame and understand sickness and disease and how they respond to sickness and disease What I'd like to do I'm not keeping track of the time but I want to try to get to it all on my slide I'd like to just sort of take a little bit of a moment and show you sort of some of the studies that I've done which I hope will inspire you inspire you in terms of finding your own nerdy black girl magic maybe you know what you want and maybe sort of this lecture might sort of make you hopefully take an anthropologist or a public health lab So I have two agendas one is international and one is national and my international focus has been as the person who introduced me mentioned was in Zimbabwe and I also do research in South Africa. My undergrad degree was international relations in political science but in political science I had a sorry in no in political science I had a focus on South African history and politics and so I feel like my starting point also my stuff is not a woman but was Medeva, Nelson Mandela as part of the anti-par-time movement so my love of Africa started a long time ago my dissertation which is the title healing the trauma of everyday life looking at traditional medicine I conducted a 15 month mix method study on HIV and AIDS and normal ZIM and the objective of the study was basically to try to figure out what's going on at that particular moment my first one was ZIM in 1997 and at that particular point Zimbabwe had the highest HIV prevalence of any country in South African Africa and still unfortunately to this day hold that high percentage there was 26.5 percent prevalence which literally means like almost one out of three it was a statistic I just couldn't wrap my head around by 2001 when I started my data collection it had gone down to about 23.7 you know at that particular point about 3,000 people were dying of age related illnesses almost every week and you know as a result life expectancy has gone down there are millions of AIDS orphans who are also most of the it's hard to sort of calculate exactly how many AIDS orphans as a result of losing their parents it's also been more vulnerable to the HIV but that particular pattern is very common Zimbabwe has this little pain country here it's a landlocked country south of South Africa Botswana and Zambia at the top and at that particular time you know we knew the factors that were enhancing risk poverty gender inequality concurred SBI concurrency having multiple sex partners which is cultural low condom use and labor migration but you know the bottom line is it was affecting the young before and the parents there was no treatment for HIV in Zimbabwe in 1997 or 2001 or 2002 when I finished I think anti retrovirals were only introduced in 2006 no yes 2006 the thing about Zimbabwe is you know it was the worst possible scenario you have all these people who are living with HIV and there's no treatment and the majority of the folks were living in the rural areas where there's limited access to western medicine so nobody was going out to the rural areas it was like a black clock like oh no no we can't go out there there's no running water whatever and western researchers didn't want to go but I would I would have determined to go and I decided to focus on what cultural strategies were helping people or policies and so I focused on the use of traditional healers and how healers were providing to a certain extent psychosocial support to help people cope with the fear and anxiety of having HIV this is the name of my field site is Chippengi a place of travels in Shishona at Chippengi Mupiyeni which is the nickname of Chippengi which means a place of trouble mostly because there's the national thought that there's a lot of witchcraft in Chippengi Chippengi was an ideal site for my study of the border community large commercial farming migrant labor, long distance trucking which is associated with the spread of HIV in East Africa higher literacy, extreme moral poverty enormous gender inequality military camp also associated with high level HIV and commercial sex workers at this day and time it felt like it was going on forever there's always been economic and political crisis this image in terms of this guy holding all this money in terms of millions of dollars of Zen notes I think it's going on actually in Venezuela sadly I remember in the field carrying around big bags it was crazy the hyperinflation was just actually crazy this is the Chippengi town going into town this is the high density area oh the scripture is that in the military? this is like a traditional house in the high density area this is the traditional round house where I conducted most of my research with my truck and we spent I spent pretty much 15 months hanging out in a little hut like this and it's just a beautiful place the highland is actually been affected by the floods from Los Angeles yeah and my prayers to them so for traditional healing so first of all medical pluralism is the norm in Zimbabwe people use western medicine people use traditional healers there's no issue or conflict because to a certain extent they do very different things traditional you know traditional medicine does provide palliative care and sort of pragmatic treatment around certain things but the thing is that it's not considered sort of in lieu of western medicine it provides an alternative explanatory model or a way of explaining sickness and misfortune and so what traditional medicine could do and they could answer the what not the what, the epidemiology or the how, the epidemiology but why, why did this happen to me and this really is around sort of metaphysical kind of questions in terms of why these are images of some traditional healers the one at the top is the diviner and the one at the bottom is raising someone's spirit and basically the traditional system of medicine is called yoga and basically it's the premise of healing is that sort of you need a balance between coolness and purity to counteract the heat and pollution of social conflict sickness to a certain extent is always kind of created by people okay in the very bottom it's called shiwete shibano illness is created by people example, switchcraft, greed, envy, etc and if there are different types of illness there's normal or abnormal or naturalistic or personalistic, you can be working out of the field, it rains on you, you get a flu it's a natural kind of thing but if it goes on too long or if it acts in a different like way that it's not normal it doesn't respond to medication then people might shift into the alternate explanatory model this is not a normal flu someone sitting on the sofa my dissertation was really talking about the performance of healing to basically look at the healing process as performative this is an image from E.R. I know most of the people here are way too young to remember the show but basically it's about the healing performance and a lot of the healing performance as we go into Downstate or Kings County there is a performance of healing there are defined roles prescribed stress, an attentive audience a therapeutic setting diagnostic process and you know, ritual justice right, exactly it's in bio-medicine as well my research basically focused on three different types of traditional healers, there are five or six in total but the three that had sort of overly theatrical components in their healing process Spirit mediums, the Viners Bay healers there are a whole slew of characters in terms of healing and horrible spirits ritual treatment and a particular ethnomedical diagnosis I'm just keeping this in mind so for 15 months basically and the population that lives in Chukundi they are called the Endow I recruited 24 healers I had over 400 patients 200 were recruited in traditional care sites and 200 in western care sites they were in the traditional care site, there were 12 different villages I went to and basically I recruited folks according to the presence of a particular opportunistic infection with HIV if they had TB recurring FBI, shingles product diarrhea there was no HIV testing in the country so I used the antiquated who-clinical guidelines to assess the likelihood this is me with the nurses everyone could tell that I was not shown because I was this one looks like she's taller but I seem to have been like taller than everybody and our method basically we recruited folks, we did a baseline assessment and then we did a follow-up a month follow-up I recruited a ridiculous amount of data and you see this one helping with the data I have a lot of qualitative data and survey data I collected over 1300 the 800 baseline surveys and then 500 follow-up surveys so this is basically a summary of paper where we looked at the main outcome which was quality of life comparing it with the traditional versus the western care and basically found that the traditional care subgroups reported significantly better quality of life over one month compared to the biomedical care subgroup and a lot of this has to do with attention and the fact that folks would queue up for two hours to see a doctor and see that doctor for maybe about 10 minutes and where a traditional healer might spend two hours figuring out the whole thing it's not just the presenting illness it's also you and your social dynamics and your co-wife and your husband's gone off to South Africa and you're afraid and etc this is the second paper that I published that analyzed the particular performance where basically the spirit diviner lectures me basically how to do good research it was very interesting but I often juxtapose it with this one particular patient who sought his care and this particular performance and how sort of his brain to lecture me kind of really damaged sort of her assessment of this healer at the end this I was going to bring a DVD with actually this particular performance which was one of my favorite performances so maybe if I can come back I'd love to talk to you guys more about this because I actually collected 150 hours of digital video 304 examples of the healing experience that's really cool my second study in Zim was around cultural conceptions of Zimbabwe the gentleman I just talked about is named Dr. Dixon Chimaja and he is at one point there were only three psychiatrists in all of Zimbabwe and he's an amazing colleague an amazing sort of advocate around mental health in Africa and he came up with an intervention called a friendship event which literally is sort of a lay health and psychosocial support and we did a pilot study to just try to figure out sort of what's the prevalence of depression we used a physician interviewed to assess whether they were depressed or not and compared it with other sort of questionnaires that may or may not be helpful with a lay health worker high prevalence of depression also the study was only in Zimbabwe but we sort of found that the lay health instrument that we wanted to use was not specific enough they had a high sensitivity but a low specificity and so there's some work that needs to be done there my other research in South Africa focused on masculinity and I do a lot of research also with men and so this is a paper that I wrote talking about fatherhood and about reproductive which I think is a little problematic but both so we're looking positively absolutely have the right to and we should do everything that we can to help them if they should choose to want to have children it's just a little bit complicated to do that in Africa because there are cultural sort of prohibitions in terms of having sort of strangers come into your family it's a really fascinating study my U.S. agenda here in Brooklyn I was part of the development of this intervention called barbershop talk with brothers I learned the formative research and we published a page to page for perceptions of HIV risk that basically identified and this study was only with heterosexual, I think it was heterosexual when the heterosexual was black men at risk we used barbershops in the venue it was really an exciting study in partner with Arthur Ashe and we found some really interesting sort of psychosocial components in terms of sort of emotional buffers around sort of like having multiple partners that like I did want to put all their eggs in one basket so I need to have like my side piece and my other side piece it was really fascinating but emotions was a really big part in terms of trying to figure out what was driving risk we also found that sort of that this population does test a lot but that doesn't mean that the high level of testing doesn't mean that people are actually maintaining and sustaining favorites I did research with a doctor in our emergency department in downstate to assess sort of the needs of sickle cell patients her name is Teresa Smith and she's amazing and basically we looked at the high frequency users of individuals with sickle cell disease who are coming into the emergency room to manage their pain and so there's a lot of stigma towards adults with sickle cell disease that they are drug seeking that they just want to come in and so forth and I find this really despicable because folks with sickle cell disease you know it's the nature of the disease the disease actually can create dependence so it's like we're blaming folks for being addicts because you know it's no fault of their own and like we need to think of more human humane ways of helping folks to deal with their addiction that they are addicted but also in terms of the stigma and discrimination within sort of the clinical context and we also interviewed Kit and of course it's a very different situation and Kit comes into the emergency room in pain they'll give them all the opiates they want and adult walks in they'll make them sit there and suffer in pain for hours I right now like my biggest focus is on health disparities and aging and you know folks are living longer absolutely because of access to health care services but the truth is one in four older Americans is not sharing this equal you know better life and a lot of it is due to health disparities Brooklyn I think is a microcosm for aging and health disparities you know heart and stroke disease for the leading cause of death and disability and one in 10 residents in Brooklyn had diabetes and the largest number of fall related emergency visits are among older as well but again my focus is on HIV and so I just wanted to show you that sort of with antiretroviral medication folks who are long-term survivors are able to what time is it? you have time it's 30 okay I want to give them the time but the bottom line is because of medication folks are able to medications with extended life expectancy folks who are living longer and so everyone's like happy and I am happy that there's treatment but the thing is that we're once again at sort of a black box in terms of HIV research right now we're faced with an aging cohort and the fact that here in New York the majority of people living with HIV are over the age of 50 and the individuals who are aging with HIV to a certain extent have a larger burden of morbidity than their HIV negative counterparts so for example one study in a row of studies based in New York found that among 50 year olds who are HIV positive that they have three times as many comorbidities as someone who is HIV negative and 70 years old and we have to say that the gradient of the epidemic disproportionately is affecting women and minorities and my big thing is that I feel that sort of with this aging issue that no one is focusing on sex and sexual health. I find it despicable that after 30 some years where we're all up in people's business talking about who you're doing it with and what you're doing it and so forth that now that the cohort is aging no one wants to look at sex and sexual health. My colleague who's also in the wise in the fact I mean it's incredible like I'm on lots of working groups and no one wants to focus on sex and sexual health but I am and I also concurrently separate I did a study on preventive means of older men and trans women with and without HIV downstate which is really fascinating and basically kind of found out that sort of like the older heterosexual guys were doing not as well as our gay and bisexual men. The erectile dysfunction is really common and but I want to go back to slide it out of order several years ago in 2011 I was lucky enough to get a career development work from National Institute of Mental Health and basically the focus of this grant was to identify the prevention use of older women so a huge part of this study was was based on using data from the women from the women's interagency I don't know what's going on HIV study and basically I looked at a lot of extent data from the wise data to try to figure out what was going on in terms of sexual risk behaviors which we now call convital sex because if you are virally suppressed and you don't use a condom it's not considered a sexual risk behavior because you have suppressed your virus and so we now call it convital sex I had a second meeting which basically was prospective I used mixed methods and did a cross sectional survey and added additional factors and did some qualitative stuff and the bottom line was that I was to use this information to try to develop an intervention this is the slide outlining the women's interagency HIV study why is that happening and it's basically it is it is merged with the men's study the men's AIDS study cohort and now we are called the combined what is it called the combined cohort study but everyone still refers to the studies with the wide view maps and originally there were six sites now there are 13 sites Brooklyn and downstate is one of the sites Bronx Chicago San Francisco LA used to be a site that dropped off then we have Washington DC and there are a whole bunch of new sites in the south Alabama help me Alabama Atlanta Mississippi so my first study looking at things standing under the wide we looked at longitudinal trends in sexual behaviors with advancing age and menopause and we found that over 13 years of follow-up lo and behold people are not using condoms they are engaging in condomless sex and then we were also looking into sexual activity in general and we found that the negative women were having more sex and also having more risky sex than the HIV positive women but then the women with HIV didn't show a greater decline in sexual activity compared to the HIV negative women so they were still sexually active but probably not as risky these are just comments to the data the second study was a mixed method study and we did a cross-sectional survey and some of the additional measures were around social support low lenient disclosure and looking at partner characteristics in the cross-sectional survey there were 2,000 women 28% at condomless sex which were probably unprotected anal and rational intercourse and among the older women about 21% reported condomless sex we just get this interesting stuff around sexual function of working on the paper right now I did 40 in-depth interviews in 8 focus groups in Bronx, Brooklyn and in Chicago and this is one of the papers that I wrote up it's the upsider is better as I've gotten older I felt that my first paper should really talk about sexuality hello older women are getting busy and enjoying themselves and we found that there was a low perception in transition risk mostly due to the perception that they understood that because they were women that it was harder to give it HIV to a man but also they understood that treatment as prevention if they were moderately suppressed the chances were low a lot of partner characteristics were driving HIV risk they're trusting their partner, the length of the relationship basically the fact that they have had a history of having a protection sex with their partner and he didn't acquire the virus so they figured they were going to go and also just the fact that the partners were accepting the risk we also found a sort of perennial problem of non-disclosure I have some quotes here but I'm not going to go through them you know this one is talking about basically the fact that they were together for a long time and that she trusts her partner this particular woman sort of said that I want to use condoms but not by my choice but by his choice he doesn't want to the length of the relationship it hasn't happened in 19 years so I'm not worried about it risk without consequences this person in particular was talking about how they've been together for 12 years and they haven't used condoms consistently and he still made it so there's my evidence non-disclosure a huge issue we found that this is a paper I'm working on about the disclosure on a need to know basis the summary of the quote on the left basically this wonderful woman who I interviewed was literally put out on the the west side the east side highway she was trying to, in the relationship really excited with this guy thought this was the moment and he put her out on that highway the east side highway big mantras are she could have been killed and then the other woman sharing about sometimes I just think these folks are crazy and I just needed to pre-handle myself here's the story of this woman we thought she was having a booty call and ended up marrying this gentleman and basically lived with the fear that she was going to infect her husband and every time he went to the doctor she was in fear you know he was going to come back he did not, he died of cancer and this is a really interesting case this woman who basically has for years been in long-term partnership never disclosed and feels like because her and her partner met each other in rooms of recovery in terms of that addiction and so forth that just assumed that there was risk in the room to a historical moment probably everyone in that room was HIV positive so she doesn't know her partner's status he doesn't know her partner's status probably the likelihood is that she's positive too but like she's living with this man for years and hiding from medicine and they don't talk about it I used all this information maybe I'll go back here I developed a program I piloted it at SCAR initially the program was called sexual health and aging program and I basically thought that risk equals risk if I just identify or recruit folks who are having common-less sex that I'll capture all the risk but this pilot taught me a really important lesson that sort of just because they're having engaging in common-less sex does it mean that there's risk that 80% of the women were virus suppressed but the real risk lie in the fact that sort of there was a that were not virus suppressed they had poorly managed multi-morbidity multiple diseases that weren't taking their medicines were in diabetes or hypertension and of course they're anti-retroviral they had concomitant psychosocial factors depression, substance abuse so that I provide that I'd like this title much better the change which is a euphemism for menopause the key in this intervention was to try to re-engage this population into talking about HIV prevention with the hook was like let's talk about menopause and the ladies were and so we developed this and really sort of decided to simply focus around sexual risk to focusing on healthy aging and so I'm filled that's what we're trying to get this right so that's good you know look there's a lot of ageism in the world in our community and they are impacting health and health outcomes and in particular in HIV I feel that this is constantly reinforced with the emphasis always on our young folks and I understand that the new incidences of HIV are among young men of color who are having sex with other men in the category that we focus on behavior not identity but the truth is that it's ignoring sort of other population difference doctors are not talking to their older adults about sex at all like way too much information it's just not happening and it's this opportunity we need more providers the CDC has encouraged sort of the age limit being extended to 64 years old for HIV testing but I just want to say in our clinic several years ago we had a gentleman who was 80 years old who basically came in with what we call a dual diagnosis he found out he was HIV positive and he had AIDS 80 years old 80 years old and so you know folks are getting these are some it's true and we need to as a person over 50 I feel like I want to be that like this is so disheartening to go to conferences like focusing on sexuality and sexual health and it stops at 24 the conversation and so I want to be a part of that trying to get people to realize that sex and sexuality is good for you it's good for your health as you're getting older I have a whole lecture about that these are some ads talking about safer sex with older adults you know it's important but you know this is mostly the images we see of older adults getting busy can anyone here figure out what's kind of really wrong with this? yeah exactly I literally I ran into Spike Lee's sister and I was just like you need to do another she did a PSA for young people and I'm like you need to do a PSA but there are no images of older black folks and loving and emphasizing your sexuality they're always very kind of it's nice to get a hug and laugh at the bed but it's like we're never presented as sexual beings what's the exception of this this clip in the middle which is actually I think it was taken down but I got it it's a red bull campaign that had these two older adults getting busy with red bull cans and it's a really horrible drink but the red bull cans fall over the place and it's funny funny funny so I just want to acknowledge my funding from NIMH social science research council all the folks in Zimbabwe again NIMH for my K the Y's the president of health disparity my Y's contributors my team in Zimbabwe including Shaka the cat and the other users of cat and psilocybin was M.I.A and Shimbab this is my my Zulu translator and key diving phase that there's one other person in here who acquired HIV statically after this study which really broke my heart so thank you guys the point of sharing with you some of my nerdy black girl magic is to just try to be an example that there are multiple paths in terms of nerdy black girl magic and in particular around science and today I wanted to share with you sort of that non-clinical not a medical doctor although I think that I try to get a medical doctor some time with me because I think that the two hand in hand are really important to focus on the clinical or the hard science just opposed to the social and behavioral science but there are lots of different paths some of you want to go into clinical care in terms of nursing, education doing biology maybe some of you will be in the PA et cetera I would encourage you guys to find and embrace your nerdy black girl magic it's in there we all have it and we need to celebrate it thank you so I thought I thought we'd take a moment to have some questions extremely thought provoking on a number of levels I actually knew you'd be really good because you've been in conversations with me so I'm not going to ask any questions I will just quietly introduce my pretty black girl magic and I will give to you the first question go ahead so maybe just one moment I just want to quickly tell us Dean Roll and Dr. Carr that's the practice that was in the and Dr. Carr is my colleague in the wide max combined whatever the packet is thank you for that I had a question regarding to the latest information about under technical equals how is that in this behavior what does it mean to have this behavior in the context of our understanding today yeah it's kind of also like with the prep if you don't know what prep is and I think that we need to look at that you guys know the you equals you campaign that's sponsored by the Department of Health so that's what Dr. Carr is sort of talking about in terms of there's a new campaign that that is unlike prep prep is a medication that if you are HIV negative and at risk of getting HIV meaning that you are hanging out in a particular social circle or something doing something that might put you at risk you can take this medication and reduce your chances of acquiring HIV by 98% it's phenomenal but yeah I read today in the newspaper I think it was in the Washington Post like there's an article talking about how taxpayers remain paying millions of dollars and this pharmaceutical company is making a lot of money Gilead is making a lot of money with Trivada but it's like I really hope that they're not going to set us up for these idiots like Vice President Pence to basically then attack this HIV prevention strategy so that's for the negatives at risk but what Dr. Carr is talking about is a campaign that's around primarily around folks who are living with the virus and in terms of really trying to get people to achieve and sustain an undetectable viral load and what Dr. Carr is sort of talking about is about what we're seeing now is a resurgence in risk behaviors and just like in the beginning in terms of the introduction of PrEP we saw this kind of resurgence of risk behaviors and so I I don't know how to really answer your question other than I think that there's something that we're not doing when we are introducing these particular strategies and sexuality and understandings are what people need and do and it's complicated people are making choices and so and the one consequence in terms of sort of acquiring new problems is the rise of SBI and here in New York we have a huge epidemic in terms of SBI are you guys aware of this oh yeah serious like you know syphilis is making a major comeback chlamydia gonorrhea I mean why I'm glad you said that because a lot of people think I'm over 50 I got through that period of life where you know like I remember the time magazine and newsweek when HIV was being introduced to the world and we survived all that but actually the there was a rise in the new cases among adults age 50 and older and so if you know someone who's 50 plus who is going to begin now on the dating scene again you sit down and have a conversation with your mom no I'm serious my mother knows I'm an HIV researcher and she got a new partner and I totally I was like I know this is going to be weird but I need to talk to you sorry I need to talk to you and because you know it's true and so uncomfortable in that field and you know we're struggling with having conversations with our medical students on faculty in the college of medicine so the only teaching I get to do is with like twice a year with the med students but I want to come back to Dr. Carr's question and you know so yes we're starting to see engagement and risk behaviors again and then people are sort of feeling kind of you know that's invulnerable and then they can do whatever they want now I've got a license, I've got my virus down I can do whatever I want but you know there are other consequences you know getting herpes for example is an STI you never get rid of you know do you want to be 65, 70 years old and getting herpes you know on top of having HIV you know herpes is painful so I'm not sure Dr. Carr if I answered that do you have any other information that you want to share with us? share with us the one that's the priority of the lottery so you mentioned the first African American woman who was a PhD in chemistry and I was sitting thinking we have a chair of her chemistry department and it occurs to me that you were the first African American woman who was the chair of the chemistry department you know I'm just going to step out of like out of like my academic thing but I think that sort of black women in academy we don't support each other enough and I really really think that I want to surround myself with like you know colleagues like you in terms of because there are so few of us there's so few I was so happy walking in here seeing all the students and beautiful faces but the truth is when I go back to downstate and I go into some of the meetings and Dr. Carr can attempt like we're the only chocolate chips in that room you know and it doesn't feel good you know and people are making decisions about our community and how we should do things and we're not engaged and so we need to figure out how to support each other through the tenure process and promotion dealing with life stuff as women dealing with kids I have a different bit of a question so what if you have in your last few minutes what is your sort of inspirational pitch to black women considering seven three years why is there a presence necessary in the field generally with specificity regarding that sort of to kind of reiterate the fact that sort of like we need to be in the room and you know I think that sort of I mean what legacy are we going to leave we need to encourage one of the my heroes that I wanted to put up was the woman who founded the Black Girl Codes and her name escapes me right this very second and we need to figure out ways to support the inclusion because we in all of these whether it's science, the hard sciences social sciences maybe the social sciences and behavioral sciences there are some sisters there but in terms of medicine in terms of public health in terms of research in terms of technology there's one sister that I just thought I had too many slides who basically was a medical doctor who created this incredibly important path I'm just like yes get on like the first black woman that like have a patent you know and I think that that's really important we need to be in the room because decisions are being made that are going to affect all of our lives and they need our perspective we are needed the science cannot advance you know just like your team sort of said in the beginning about ideas matter our ideas matter we can like I really do firmly believe that inclusion that our voices in that mix that we need to be there to further the science you know whatever I sort of see kind of you know like homogenous kind of little groups doing stuff and mostly like in marketing you know I'm just like oh do you have black person in the room but the thing is it also breaks down in science and the fact that sort of people are constructing studies in really funky ways and are not necessarily thinking about the communities that they're affecting okay representation matters and they'll just hire you know a black person to do the interviews you know don't you know tokenize you know but it's it's a little problem I think that engineering and technology in particular are the two areas that are the black women are not exposed to and I think that's one of the crucial areas that we should think of which is one of the reasons why I started off the slide highlighting those incredible women who are mathematicians and engineers who basically help us get you know the US space program off the ground and then I followed up with the chemists because I feel like those the mathematicians the engineers and the chemists these are areas that unfortunately are not nurturing us and so we need to figure that out unfortunately I have two boys I mean not unfortunately I love my two boys if I had a girl I mean I'm doing all kinds of stuff with my boys but I realize like I need to find another place where I can also provide that mentoring for a young a young girl although to tell you we're about 70% women here in college we will google welcome you to be a mentor for a young community college and you know we just want to say thank you thank you guys so nice to pose to you I'm going to actually skedaddle because I have any grants meaning I'm trying to put together a huge grant on health disparities and aging it downstate the nerdy black girl unfortunately there were a lot of meetings here but I do hope to stay in touch and I didn't put up here like my e-mail but what do you share with us actually I have so I will turn I will take a look at the attendance list and I'll just share so if you guys I'll send it to okay excellent thank you guys thank you thank you we just got a nerdy black girl award yes a prize money fat in your school like you give an award to a student