Psychology and AIDS Leadership Award Recipients

The APA Ad Hoc Committee on Psychology and AIDS (COPA) presents the Psychology and AIDS Leadership Award to actively demonstrate COPA’s commitment to ensuring that issues pertaining to HIV/AIDS are kept at the forefront of psychological research, education, training and practice. The Psychology and AIDS Leadership Award recognizes distinguished leaders in the field who have made substantial contributions and show promise of an extensive, influential career.

The award is given in two categories, emerging and distinguished leaders, in one or more areas of influence: service provision; research; teaching/mentoring and policy/advocacy.

Robert H. Remien, PhD

2020 Distinguished Leader Award

Robert H. Remien, PhD, receives the 2020 Psychology and AIDS Distinguished Leader Award as an Emerging Leader for “a decades-long career that stands as a model of how psychologists have uniquely contributed to the domestic and international battle against HIV/AIDS and for highlighting the critical role that mental health plays in efforts to end the epidemic .”

Remien is director of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies and professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University and in the NY State Psychiatric Institute. Remien is also associate director of the Division of Gender, Sexuality, and Health, a faculty mentor for HIV Center Postdoctoral Fellows, the clinical director of Behavioral Health for the Northeast Caribbean AIDS Education and Training Center (AETC), and a clinical supervisor to psychiatric residents in training. His research is focused on mental health, sexual risk behavior and adherence to treatment and care, and he has developed and tested several behavioral interventions in these domains in both domestic and international settings.

He has served as chair for the New York State Psychological Association's Task Force on AIDS, a member of the New York City's Department of Health Prevention Planning Group and senior faculty for the American Psychological Association's HIV training program for psychologists. Most recently, he served as Data Committee co-chair for the NY State Governor’s Ending the HIV Epidemic Task Force and continues to serve on the NY State AIDS Advisory Council Ending the HIV Epidemic Committee. He also maintains a part-time private practice in clinical psychology in Manhattan.

Devin English, PhD

2020 Emerging Leader Award

Devin English, PhD, receives the 2020 Psychology and AIDS Emerging Leader Award as an Emerging Leader for “his innovative research on racial discrimination and health inequities, and commitment to addressing the effect intersectional stigma has on the psychological well-being of communities most impacted by HIV“.

English is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban-Global Public Health at Rutgers University. He earned his BA in Psychology from Macalester College and his PhD in Clinical/Community Psychology from the George Washington University. His pre-doctoral research was partially funded by a three-year NIDA F31 grant examining daily racial discrimination measurement and modelling its longitudinal effects on psychosocial outcomes among Black U.S. American adolescents and adults. He subsequently completed his postdoctoral research at Hunter College of the City University of New York where his research focused on examining the health effects of intersectional racial and sexual identity discrimination among Black queer men.

English is committed to reducing health inequities through understanding, combating and preventing racism, heterosexism and other forms of identity-based violence. His research has focused on the harmful health effects of discrimination within Black communities in the U.S. English’s current research aims to promote the health and wellbeing of Black LGBTQ youth communities through understanding and confronting the intersection of racism and heterosexism. Presently, English is examining the biological, psychological, and social effects of daily intersectional discrimination among young Black sexual minority men — a project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. As a part of this project, English is engaging in community-based research to co-develop a strengths-based mobile app intervention that helps to combat health inequities caused by intersectional discrimination (e.g., HIV, major depression). English is currently contributing to policy-focused research through his collaboration on the Health Data for New York City (HD4NYC) initiative — an interdisciplinary health equity research program at the New York City Department of Health. English also seeks to contribute to discrimination prevention through teaching and mentoring and hopes to integrate stigma prevention programs with the interventions on which he is currently working.

"How Much Racism Do You Face Every Day?", New York Times article focused on English’s researchopens in new window

Daniel R. Parker, PhD

2019 Distinguished Leader Award

Daniel R. Parker, PhD, received the 2019 Psychology and AIDS Distinguished Leader Award as a Distinguished Leader for “years of compassionate service to improve the lives of people living with HIV through clinical work, research, policy and advocacy efforts, and teaching and mentoring the next generation of HIV researchers and service providers.” Parker is a clinical psychologist with the Behavioral Health Services Department at Desert AIDS Project (DAP). He is currently DAP’s longest-tenured psychologist. Parker has over 20 years of experience providing mental health services to persons with living with HIV/AIDS, to members of the LGBT community, and to older adults, in both the U.S. and Australia. He is the former clinical director of an innovative mental health program in at the Golden Rainbow Center-SAGE in Palm Springs focused on LGBT older adults.

Parker has been a member of various state and national advisory boards addressing issues of LGBT mental health and aging and has provided training and seminars regarding these and other aging-related issues. Some of his past work has included helping gather funds to create the CBT for Late Life Depression program as well as chairing the Older Adult Working Group of the Reducing Disparities Project. As a licensed psychologist in Australia and the U.S., Parker has worked for many of the last 12 years in the Western Australia Health Service, in both their older adult and HIV services. In 2012, Parker was part of an Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging Working Group, which led to the implementation of their National LGBTI Aging and Aged Care Strategy.

He is a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and is currently co-chair of DAP’s Transgender Health Program. He is also a member of the LGBT Aging Interest Network (LAIN) of the American Society on Aging.

Parker earned his PhD in clinical psychology in 1994 from Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology, Berkeley, California.

Valerie A. Earnshaw, PhD  

2019 Emerging Leader Award

Valerie A. Earnshaw, PhD, received the 2019 Psychology and AIDS Distinguished Leader Award as an Emerging Leader for “contributions to understanding and addressing the mechanisms underlying HIV stigma through research, policy work, and advocacy.”  

Earnshaw is assistant professor of Human Development & Family Sciences, University of Delaware, and was previously an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and an associate scientific researcher in the Division of General Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital. Earnshaw’s work contributes to understandings of how stigma relates to health outcomes and disparities across the lifespan, and what moderates these associations in protective ways. She primarily focuses on stigma experienced by adolescents and adults at risk for or living with chronic illnesses including HIV. As examples, her research demonstrates that stigma experienced by Black and Latino socioeconomically disadvantaged middle school students is associated with greater likelihood of smoking as well as higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure, higher body mass index and lower self-rated health. She has also found that stigma experienced by Black and Latina pregnant young women is associated with lower infant birth weight, poorer mental health and greater engagement in sexual risk behaviors. Her research further suggests that social support protects adolescents and adults from the deleterious impact of stigma on health outcomes. Within the context of this work, she applies an advanced quantitative skillset including structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling and psychometric evaluation techniques.

Earnshaw earned her PhD in social psychology in 2011 from the University of Connecticut, where she pursued additional training in social processes of HIV/AIDS, health psychology, and quantitative research methods. Earnshaw completed post-doctoral training via the National Institutes of Mental Health Interdisciplinary HIV Prevention Training Program at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University before joining Boston Children’s Hospital in 2014.

Faye Z. Belgrave, PhD

2018 Distinguished Leader Award

Faye Belgrave, PhD, received the 2018 Psychology and AIDS Distinguished Leader Award as a Distinguished Leader for “decades of pioneering, community-engaged research, collaborative partnerships, and evidence-based training focused on HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention science at national and international levels.”

Belgrave is a professor of Health Psychology and Social Psychology and the director, Center for Cultural Experiences in Prevention at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work is community and intervention focused and attends to aspects of culture (gender, ethnicity, age, and place, etc.) to promote well-being among African American youth and young adults. She works collaboratively with community based agencies to identify and implement relevant programming and research. Recent projects provided culturally integrated substance abuse, HIV prevention and sex education curriculums to African American college students and students attending middle school. In another project, she implemented and evaluated a culturally specific HIV prevention intervention for African American females; this project was expanded by including a male component. Another study examines the role of culture and community in tobacco and other drug use among African American youth in rural and urban communities. Additionally, her work has involved other areas of health promotion (e.g., prevention of cancer, diabetes, depression) and with other ethnic minority populations (e.g., Latinas and Asian Americans). Her activities and research have included collaborative work with local school systems, Churches and faith based institutions, community based youth servicing agencies, local health clinics, and Black Colleges and Universities among others. Her most recent work has been funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Office on Women's Health.

"African American young adults are at higher risk for HIV than any other racial/ethnic group. How can we most effectively reduce their HIV risk?"opens in new window

Don Operario, PhD 

2018 Distinguished Leader Award

Don Operario, PhD, received the 2018 Psychology and AIDS Distinguished Leader Award as a Distinguished Leader for "outstanding and valuable national and international contributions to HIV/AIDS research, community-engaged prevention and intervention science, and steadfast commitment to mentoring, teaching, and service."

Operario is professor of Public Health in the Department of Behavior and Social Sciences and associate dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Public Health, Brown University.

Operario was trained as a Social and Health Psychologist (BA, UCLA; MS, PhD, UMass Amherst; Postdoctoral Fellow, UC San Francisco). He was previously on the faculty of the University of Oxford (Department of Social Policy and Social Work) and before that was at the University of California San Francisco (Center for AIDS Prevention Studies - Department of Medicine).

His research addresses two inter-related areas. The first general area concerns the social psychological determinants of HIV, sexual health, and related health issues (substance use, mental health) in diverse communities, with an emphasis on developing and evaluating theory-based social and behavioral interventions for members of high-risk groups. A second research area concerns the lived experiences associated with social inequality, with an emphasis on understanding the perspectives of disadvantaged group members and addressing associated health and psychosocial disparities. He conducts research addressing both U.S. domestic and international public health issues.

H. Jonathon Rendina, PhD, MPH

2018 Emerging Leader Award

H. Jonathon Rendina, PhD, MPH, received the 2018 Psychology and AIDS Distinguished Leader Award as a Emerging Leader for "outstanding dedication to innovative, cutting-edge research, exceptional teaching, and contributions to HIV/AIDS prevention science."

Rendina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). He is also the Director of Quantitative Methods and a Faculty Investigator at the Center for HIV Educational Studies & Training, Hunter College, CUNY. Rendina’s research is broadly focused on the impact of social stress on health, and I am currently pursuing research looking at how HIV-related stressors influences the mental, behavioral, and physical health of HIV-positive gay and bisexual men. This work is informed by the minority stress model and seeks to integrate HIV-related and sexual minority stressors into a unified model of health for this population. Much of his research uses online and mobile technologies, particularly intensive longitudinal designs such as ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and his long-term goal is to develop and test mobile health (i.e., mHealth) interventions aimed at reducing the impact of social stress on health. I am also interested in the role of emotions as mediators and moderators of the stress-health association, with a particular emphasis on how emotional processing and its interaction with cognitive processing might help to explain why and for whom there is a he is also actively involved in several others lines of research, including: (1) developing event-level models of sexual decision making that integrate both cognitive and affective processes; (2) predictors, consequences, and patterns of substance use and abuse; and (3) HIV prevention, particularly pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and modeling trends over time in PrEP acceptability, uptake and suspension. He maintains a particularly heavy emphasis on research methods and statistics, and regularly utilize methods such as multilevel modeling (MLM), factor analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM), psychometric analysis and latent class analysis (LCA).