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Dr. Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez

Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez has undertaken research in many different disciplines, including neuroscience, sociology, kinesiology, and community-based participatory research. While her interests have been diverse, her work has seen her steadfastly commit to better understanding health and social equity.

鈥淎fter my Master鈥檚 [degree] where I studied the neurological impacts of intimate partner violence-related brain injury, I realized I wanted to do research that was more deeply embedded and directly informed by community needs and priorities,鈥� she recounts. She fulfilled that goal during the first year of her PhD program while coordinating the Positive Dance study, a community-based dance program created by, with, and for women living with HIV (WLWH). That experience led Maldonado-Rodriguez to investigate specific issues impacting migrant WLWH through a community-engaged lens, a topic which became the focus of her PhD work and is now the topic of her new postdoctoral study.

Over the next two year, Maldonado-Rodriguez will examine the impacts and limitations of a public health surveillance framework 鈥� the HIV Care Cascade 鈥� when applied to racialized and migrant women living with HIV (WLWH). The HIV Care Cascade measures patient progress through HIV care towards viral undetectability with the underlying goal of risk assessment and risk reduction. However, literature suggests that such surveillance can be stigmatizing to WLWH because it labels certain individual as 鈥榟igh risk鈥�. For racialized and/or migrant women 鈥� who are overrepresented in newly diagnosed cases of HIV in British Columbia 鈥� stigmatization from surveillance may add an additional barrier for a group that may already be experiencing challenges in securing access to health care.

鈥淚t is essential to understand how overarching policies, processes, and practices impact people鈥檚 everyday lives, particularly within a political climate that is increasingly hostile to newcomers,鈥� says Maldonado-Rodriguez. 鈥淢y long-term aim to better understand and make visible the structural drivers of HIV stigma and intersectional marginalization impacting racialized and migrant women living with HIV.鈥�

When she is not working in partnership to address systemic health inequity experienced by WLWH, Maldonado-Rodriguez can be found rock climbing in s岣祑xw煤7mesh. 鈥淚 am so grateful to live on these beautiful lands and to climb in one of the world鈥檚 best bouldering areas.鈥�

Dr. Amanda Rowlands

Dr. Amanda Rowlands鈥� postdoctoral research program will see the FHS alumnus taking on a new project, thanks to the funding from a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship award.

Rowlands completed her PhD at FHS in 2024, examining how social, structural, and environmental challenges and stress can impact reproductive maturation outcomes, including the timing and pace of the onset of ovarian function in adolescent girls. She reflects that her doctoral studies have spurred her interest and drive to better understand how and why intersecting socio-structural and environmental contexts and inequities can impact health.

鈥淢y long-term research program aims to better understand complex health issues during adolescence, to ultimately make positive impacts on the reproductive health and rights of adolescents in both Canada and globally.鈥�

Rowlands, who is working in the Global HIV Interdisciplinary Research Leadership lab led by FHS Professor Angela Kaida, is currently engaged in an in-depth analysis of how stress and inflammation resulting from gender-based inequities may act as a set of biological mechanisms that shape bacterial vaginosis acquisition among adolescent girls and young women in South Africa. Her CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship will enable Rowlands to expand her investigation to include exploration of how chronic inflammation affects the relationship between gender inequities (such as sexual- and gender-based violence, and power inequities), psychosocial stress, and vaginal tract infections including bacterial vaginosis.

鈥淐hronic inflammation is the result of a persistent, over-activation of the immune system, which can be caused by socio-structural and environmental factors leading to stress, and is also proposed to increase the risk of vaginal tract infections,鈥� observes Rowlands. Her objective with this project is to measure and describe the associations between chronic inflammation, physiologic stress resulting from gender inequities, and poor reproductive and sexual health outcomes such as vaginal infections. While she is taking a physiological and biological approach to some aspects of her analysis, Rowland will be grounding her research program in a framework that engages youth with lived experience of gender inequities at each stage of the research process, from study design to communication of important knowledge with community members, key stakeholders, and policy makers.

鈥淲orking in the space of reproductive and sexual health, and collaborating with youth community members, has emphasized the need for adopting strengths-based approaches in how we understand health impacts and health outcomes,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 am committed to meeting community priorities in this knowledge space, to support and empower adolescent girls and young women in strengthening health knowledge and advocating for their sexual and reproductive health and rights.鈥�

When Rowlands is not working to improve the health of people across the globe, you can frequently find her in the outdoors enjoying the backcountry while skiing or hiking.