Gina Wingood, ScD, MPH

Gina Wingood, ScD, MPH, received her MPH from UC Berkeley, and her ScD, from Harvard University, Chan School of Public Health in Society and Health (currently known as Social and Behavioral Sciences).  Dr. Wingood is the Sidney and Helaine Lerner Endowed Professor of Public Health Promotion, and Professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health (MSPH), Columbia University. Dr. Wingood also serves as the Founding Director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion. The Lerner Center conducts research in health communications, and designing and disseminating evidence-based public health programs. Dr. Wingood is Co-Director (with Dr. Claude Mellins) of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, in this role she collaborates with all cores, especially the Health Equity Core.  In service, Dr. Wingood served committee’s that are advisory to the Columbia University Provost, as a member of Tenure, Review and Promotion Committee, and as a member of Columbia University’s Community Advisory Council to review and assess community-facing programs around the University.  Dr. Wingood is an African American scholar and an expert in HIV/AIDS prevention and social determinants of HIV.

Over the past 30 years Dr. Wingood’s research has focused on designing, implementing, evaluating, and disseminating individual, dyadic, and institutional level interventions for African American women. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defined six of her HIV prevention interventions for women as evidence-based interventions. My CDC-defined SISTA intervention is the most widely disseminated HIV intervention for African American women nationally.  She has served as PI or Multiple PI (MPI) on numerous NIH-funded studies, including the Women’s Interagency HIV Study, Faith-based HIV Prevention for African American Women, NIMH Multisite HIV/STD Prevention Trial for African American Couples (U10 MH064393), National Survey on HIV Risk for African American and White Women (R01HD041716), and HIV Prevention for Xhosa Speaking Women in South Africa (P30 A1050409). Further, she is the lead developer of the adaptation framework, known as ADAPT-ITT. This framework is the most widely used adaptation framework in the field of HIV and has been used to enhance cultural relevancy and fit of evidence-based HIV interventions. Dr. Wingood has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers and served as PI or Co-PI on more than 20 NIH-funded grants. Currently, she is an MPI for the Atlanta site, on the NIH-funded MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study (U01HL146241). This is the largest and longest running study of men and women living and at risk of HIV. Since July 2021, she has served as the PI/Director of the NIH-funded T32 on Social Determinants of HIV (T32MH128395). The goal of this underrepresented pre-doctoral program is to prepare students for research and teaching careers that examine social determinants of HIV, and structural factors that influence HIV, nationally and globally.