Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science Megan Threats joined the SC&I faculty in September. Threats earned her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and through her scholarship she aims to use a critical theoretical and community-engaged approach, to develop, implement, and evaluate culturally-appropriate HIV informatics interventions.
She investigates the influence of socio-ecological factors on health information practices and sexual and reproductive healthcare utilization. The goal of her research is to leverage informatics to improve the health outcomes of sexual and gender minority communities of color and reduce the subsequent health disparities affecting these populations.
Threats is Visiting Research Faculty at the Yale School of Public Health in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, and an affiliate at the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies. She was formerly a Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholar, McNair Scholar, and is currently a Forward Fellow in the Social Intervention Group at Columbia University.
Below, Threats discusses her current research with SC&I.
My program of research centers on leveraging biomedical, consumer, and patient-oriented informatics to improve the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of sexual and gender minority communities of color. I use a community-engaged approach to support the development, implementation, and evaluation of culturally-appropriate, theory-informed HIV informatics interventions.
Currently, I am partnering with Games for Change to develop a prototype of a video game for sexual minority Black young adults designed to improve linkage and retention in HIV prevention and care, self-efficacy for social support building, and health information evaluation. The video game concept and design is based on the user-design requirements shared by participants in a community-based participatory research study I conducted as principal investigator.
This fall, I am teaching Reference Sources and Services.
