Dr. Yarnecia Dyson, winner of the 2018-2019 Linda Arnold Carlisle Research Grant

Each academic year, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program awards a faculty member with the Linda Arnold Carlisle Faculty Research Grant to support research or creative work related to our program. Dr. Yarneccia D. Dyson, Assistant Professor of Social Work, is the winner of the 2018-2019 Linda Arnold Carlisle Faculty Research Grant for her research project “Herstory: The Use of Womanism as an Epistemological Lens to Explore Sexual Health Risks and Lived Experiences of Women of Color in College Aged 18- 29″.

She is a Health Disparities Researcher who is dedicated to research that focuses on empowering marginalized communities. Her research agenda focuses on the exploration of sexual decision making skills, testing behaviors, and all levels (Individual, Group, and Community) of risk perception for HIV and STI.

An excerpt from her project–“The Herstory project seeks to fill a gap in the literature regarding beliefs and effective practices for reducing sexual burden for all students at MSIs and HBCUs, with particular attention to the lived experiences of Women of Color who are at elevated risk for HIV for the goals of understanding risk perception, sexual decision-making skills, attitudes towards prevention and testing, and well as the impact of the college environment.

This Award will be integral in collecting and publishing qualitative research using participants’ voices to detail their lived experiences—components that are understudied and absent from the literature, that will explain sexual health risks, cultural factors, and the effects of the social environment when addressing the needs of marginalized populations.”

This is an excerpt from the original article published on the Women’s & Gender Studies website.