In the first episode of Season 2, host Anil Arora speaks to Dr. Samira Ali about dissertations, racial justice principles, and positionality. 

Dr. Ali’s scholarship focuses on community-based participatory research (CBPR), primary and secondary HIV prevention, and the impact of structural conditions on youth and women’s health behaviors in global and local settings. Specifically, in a recent project, she utilized a CBPR framework and mixed-methods design to explore sex worker mothers’ relationship and sexual health communication with their adolescent children in Kolkata, India. Particularly, with the sex worker community in Kolkata, she designed, implemented, and tested the feasibility of culturally tailored, family-based sexual health communication intervention. She also serves as principal investigator on a team of academic and community partners in New York City for a series of community-based studies examining the impact of housing as a structural intervention on risk behaviors and mental health of women living with HIV.

Dr. Ali mentions the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work’s Racial Justice Principles. Learn more at https://www.uh.edu/socialwork/about/racial-justice-at-the-gcsw/racial-justice-principles/index

Learn more at uh.edu/socialwork/actionresearch