Investigating the HIV/AIDS Disparity with Cultural Geography and Public Health Methods

该奖项是作为NSF的社会，行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界，工业或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF的奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。NSF致力于促进来自科学界各部门的科学家，包括来自代表性不足的群体的科学家参与其研究计划和活动;博士后期间被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的重要水平。每个博士后研究员必须解决推进各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在查佩尔山的北卡罗来纳州大学的Tonia Poteat博士的赞助下，这个博士后奖学金支持研究农村艾滋病毒/艾滋病差异的文化地理的早期职业科学家。除了临床描述之外，人们对空间和文化特征与健康差异的关系还知之甚少。为了解决这个问题，领先的艾滋病毒/艾滋病差距研究人员呼吁工作，采用叙事和以社区为重点的方法。该项目采用这种方法来考虑如何在社区内就艾滋病毒/艾滋病的差异进行谈判。通过关注叙述，本项目调查了与健康不平等有关的农村社区的轮廓和功能。该项目旨在提供关键的洞察力，如何口述历史的背景和动员艾滋病毒/艾滋病的影响，在美国的社区和社会经验的空间知识。它采用（1）研究回顾，（2）口述历史访谈，（3）实地观察。研究审查涉及权衡如何在创造性写作和人文研究以前发表的文献提供类似于口述历史的叙述，中继个人和社区对艾滋病毒/艾滋病的差异反应。这种研究审查旨在为公共卫生方法提供信息，并提高对艾滋病毒/艾滋病在文化方面的差异的理解。该项目的实地工作包括收集一系列口述历史访谈，并进行实地观察，以衡量人文叙事作为主要数据的相关潜力。特别是，访谈的重点是艾滋病毒/艾滋病的影响，从1980年代到现在已经改变了个人的关系，他们的农村社区，以及集体的社会环境已经形成的方式。这项研究将最终促进从受艾滋病毒影响的人的观点更好地理解艾滋病毒不平等的社会地形，以加强更迎合，地方具体的干预措施。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Tonia Poteat at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist researching the cultural geography of rural HIV/AIDS disparities. Not enough is yet known about spatial and cultural identities in relation to health disparities beyond clinical descriptors. To address this issue, leading HIV/AIDS disparity researchers call for work that employs narrative and community-focused approaches. This project employs such approaches to consider the ways HIV/AIDS disparities are negotiated in communities. By focusing on narratives, this project investigates the contours and functions of rural communities related to health inequity. This project aims to provide critical insight into how oral histories contextualize and mobilize spatial knowledge of HIV/AIDS' impact on the community and social experiences in the United States. It uses (1) research review, (2) oral history interviewing, and (3) field observation. Research review involves weighing how previously published literature in the creative writing and humanistic studies offer narratives similar to oral history that relay personal and community responses to HIV/AIDS disparity. Such research review is designed to inform public health methodology and improve understandings of HIV/AIDS disparity in cultural terms. Fieldwork for the project involves collecting a series of oral history interviews and conducting field observations to weigh the pertinent potential of humanistic narratives as primary data. In particular, interviews focus on how the impact of HIV/AIDS from the 1980s to now has altered individual's relationships to their rural communities as well as the ways collective social environments have formed. This study will ultimately foster improved understandings of the social terrain of HIV disparity from the points-of-views of those affected by it in order to potentiate more catered, place-specific interventions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.