Tune in to Focus Carolina during morning, noon and evening drive times and on the weekends to hear stories from faculty members at UNC and find out what ignites their passion for their work. Focus Carolina is an exclusive program on 97.9 The Hill WCHL, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Ada Adimora, Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, professor of epidemiology with the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and co-director of Carolina’s Center for AIDS Research, studies how HIV is transmitted in African-American women, especially in underserved populations in the South.
For her work in HIV research, she recently received Carolina’s Thomas Jefferson Award, the highest honor given to faculty.
“We looked specifically at how social, economic and political factors like mass incarceration, racism and poverty increase people’s risk for getting HIV above and beyond risk behaviors,” said Adimora. “And a lot of these forces are interrelated.”
Adimora’s research work and collation of data to assist in identifying specific factors affecting the Black community came from a combination of experiential learning and analysis of larger trends.
“It was clear to me from talking to Black patients with HIV that while some people did have the traditional risk factors … a certain proportion of black people with HIV really didn’t have what people would consider to be high-risk behavior,” said Adimora. “And as a Black person and understanding what so many Black people experienced, specifically effects of racism, I wanted to study how that impacted people’s risk for HIV and the behaviors that affect HIV transmission.”
Her big-picture research approach represents a larger attempt to move beyond traditional limiting factors and methodologies. Transmission of HIV is a complex issue, with a complex process involved in analyzing it.
“What we really were attempting to do was to move beyond studying individual behaviors,” said Adimora. “Studying social networks — and sexual networks, really — that facilitate transmission of HIV.”
When Dr. Adimora moved to North Carolina, she found more to learn about HIV, and her colleagues at Carolina have provided the kind of collaboration that is heralded at the University.
“This is unquestionably the most collegial of any research intensive university,” she said. “That’s really the thing I like most, that all of my colleagues are incredibly supportive and they’re so accomplished.”
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