Melissa DuPont-Reyes, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Assistant Professor, Mailman School of Public Health 
Columbia University

Trained as a psychiatric and social epidemiologist, Dr. DuPont-Reyes is an interdisciplinary public health scholar who centers her research on issues of equity in population mental health among young and underserved populations. Her research seeks to understand how early prevention of mental illness stigma among adolescents may help reduce disparities in mental health care access and utilization across the life course. Her current projects address three important goals of research on mental illness stigma: (1) development and testing of low-dose, high-reach interventions to reduce mental illness stigma via school health education and mass media, (2) evaluation of mental illness stigma across intersectional social identities and media settings, and (3) advancing theory to help further our understanding of familial aggregation of mental illness. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the studies Dr. DuPont-Reyes has led on U.S.-based Latinx media have broader public health implications.

Janet M. Turan, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Professor, Department of Health Policy and Organization
University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. Turan is a Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Organization at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Public Health and Director of the UAB Sparkman Center for Global Health. She holds secondary appointments in infectious diseases and epidemiology. Dr. Turan is a social and behavioral scientist with main research interests in the areas of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV prevention and treatment in low-resource settings of both developing and developed countries. She completed her doctoral training in population dynamics at Johns Hopkins University and her postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco Center for AIDS Prevention Studies. Dr. Turan’s current research includes qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies designed to address HIV-related stigma—as well as intersectional stigma related to poverty, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, substance use, and reproductive choices—in underserved settings such as rural Kenya and the Deep South in the United States. She is the principal investigator on several NIH-funded studies that examine the effects of the mechanisms of action of, and intervention strategies for HIV-related stigma and intersectional stigma as they relate to utilization of maternal and child health services, HIV testing, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, HIV medication adherence, and engagement in HIV care. In addition, her current research program includes the study of stigma as it relates to a variety of other health services and conditions, including unintended pregnancy, obstetric fistula, breast cancer, and gender-based violence. Dr. Turan has served as the lead of an NIH Fogarty International Center expert group on intersectional stigma and global health.