PhD Student Sabrina Cluesman Awarded APHA Conference Scholarship

Second-year PhD student Sabrina R. Cluesman was awarded a scholarship from the American Public Health Association’s Public Health Social Work Section to attend the 2020 APHA Annual Meeting and Expo. The scholarship covers most of the registration fee for the event, which is being held virtually from October 25-28, 2020. 

Sabrina, who describes herself as “an LGBTQ youth and HIV researcher committed to anti-racism, intersectionality, and resilience,” said the scholarship will enable her to attend the APHA conference for the first time. She will also be presenting at the conference for the first time, as a member of the Intervention Innovations Team Lab (IIT-Lab) led by her PhD Program mentor, Professor and Associate Dean for Research Marya Gwadz. Their abstract title is “Stopping, starting, and sustaining HIV antiretroviral therapy: A mixed methods retrospective exploration among long-term survivors of HIV in high-risk contexts.”

“As a first time attendee and presenter at APHA,” Sabrina said, “I am excited to soak up the wealth of knowledge at the conference, network with my peers and mentors, and most of all learn new and innovative research that advances our field.” She is particularly interested in attending sessions in the HIV, Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Public Health Social Work sections. “Public Health and Social Work have so much to learn from each other,” she observed. “As a Social Worker with a long practice career in Public Health, I intend to center my scholarship on merging the vast knowledge base of both fields in an effort to impact the lives of LGBTQ young people of color.”

Sabrina credited Dr. Gwadz for encouraging her to seek the scholarship to attend APHA as well as to present at the conference. “Dr. Gwadz has been an incredible mentor,” she said. “She helped me craft a compelling abstract of our research with Black and Latinx adults living with HIV. I am lucky to have found not only an experienced and successful mentor whose research interests directly align with my own, but also a mentor who supports and encourages me each step of the way in my PhD journey.”