Associate professor of psychology and coordinator of the African & African American Studies minor, Buffie Longmire-Avital and her collaborators receive grant to address the needs of Black women living with HIV in the South during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Buffie Longmire-Avital, associate professor of psychology and coordinator of the African & African American Studies minor, is part of a team that has received a grant to address the needs of Black women living with HIV in the South during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The grant will support the work of a proposed collaborative community-based research intervention between Longmire-Avital, SEEDS of Healing, Inc. (SOH) Executive Director, LeShonda Wallace, and North Carolina Central University Assistant Professor of Information Sciences Siobhan Day Grady. The team was awarded a $20,000 SPARK! Grant through a joint funding program with Gilead’s Compass Initiative and the Southern AIDS Coalition.
The grant will support the launch of “SOH Time: Virtual Support for Black Women Living Positively”, a web-based space for Black, African American women living with HIV. This custom-designed and culturally tailored website will offer a series of topic-specific support groups, opportunities to engage with experts on HIV and the health of Black, African-American women, while providing tangible tools to aid adherence to HIV medication and other health behaviors while social distancing.
Elon psychology major Jenna Dahl ’21 will be working with Longmire-Avital on this community-based research intervention.