 |
|
|
Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health
|
|
|
| For the last decade, Dr. Nancy VanDevanter has conducted community-based participatory research in Northern Manhattan where she has strong ties to community-based organizations. Her paper "Developing a Collaborative Community, Academic, Health Department Partnership for STD Prevention: the Gonorrhea Community Action
Project in Harlem" describes her approach to community partnership. Dr. VanDevanter has conducted numerous intervention studies focused on health issues that disproportionately effect minority communities including HIV, STDs, and tobacco use. She was principal investigator for Women In Group Support (WINGS) a theory driven randomized trial, with a multi-session, group/skills training intervention, conducted among Latino and African American adolescents in Northern Manhattan who were at high risk for HIV/STDs. For eight years she was principal investigator for the Gonorrhea Community Action Project (GCAP), a CDC-funded multi-level, multi-site intervention to increase health care seeking and diagnosis and treatment of STDs for high-risk adolescents.
|
|
|
|
Selected Professional Affiliations |
| ▪
Member, American Public Health Association |
| ▪
Member, American Sociological Association |
|
| Selected Honors and Awards |
| ▪ CDC STD Prevention Fellowship, 1996, ATPM |
| ▪ Publich Health Achievement Award, 1999, NYCDOH/MSPH |
|
|
Selected New York City Activities |
|
Community Assessment of Infrastructure and Capacity for Tobacco Control in Central Harlem
The purpose of the study is to develop and pilot test a tool for assessing community capacity and infrastructure for tobacco control that can be adopted by communities and by departments of public health nationally. Central Harlem in New York City is a community with rates of tobacco use nearly double that of other communities in New York State and nationally. In partnership with a Harlem community action board, CAPH researchers have conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with key informants, focus groups of adolescent and adult smokers and non-smokers, and an assessment of available programs and services for tobacco control in the community. The Community Assessment Tool Kit will be available via website or by the mail in the fall of 2004.
|
Challenges of Adjustment to HIV Infection in Adolescents
Adolescents constitute one of the fastest growing populations of HIV-infected individuals today. For a variety of reasons, adolescents living with HIV/AIDS constitute a population at risk for psychological adjustment to their illness. Over the last decade, advances in the treatment of HIV disease have significantly extended survival, allowing most infected individuals who learn of their infection and enter treatment to now live with HIV/AIDS as a chronic disease. Given the scarcity of information about the lived experiences of HIV-infected adolescent, we are conducting a qualitative study of 80 HIV-infected African-American and Latino youths, age 13-24 years, residing in New York City (40 males, 40 females) to assess the adaptive challenges, coping responses, the specific role of substance use in adaptive efforts and risky behavior; and how HIV infection in adolescents many interfere with the accomplishments of age-specific developmental tasks.
|
The Gonorrhea Community Action Project (GCAP)
Project URL: http://www.checkoutthatbody.com/
GCAP is a CDC-funded intervention to increase health care seeking and diagnosis and treatment of STDs for high-risk adolescents. Interventions were collaboratively developed with communities and health departments in Central Harlem in New York City as well as Maryland and California. An intensive joint planning process occurred in year one to maintain comparability across the three sites. Interventions were designed and implemented at the client, provider, clinic, and community levels. Local interventions included 1) an intervention to increase sexual history taking and urine-based STD screening among healthcare providers; 2) small group workshops at community based organizations to increase the number of youth at risk for STDs seeking health check-ups and an interactive youth friendly health information website, www.checkoutthatbody.com,; 3) a community-wide, small-print media intervention to raise awareness among adolescents and young adults about the importance of going for a health check up, entitled Check Out That Body.
|
|
|
|
|
