NCID-1463
Judy Tan
Assistant Professor of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
Education/Degree:
1 Social Psychology (University of Connecticut)
About
Dr. Judy Y. Tan is a behavioral scientist and Assistant Professor in the Division of Prevention Science, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, at UCSF. She received her PhD in social psychology from the University of Connecticut, with advanced graduate certifications in quantitative research methods and health psychology.Dr. Tan?s research and training on health disparities among disenfranchised populations focus on understanding social and psychological processes underlying disparate outcomes, with recent focus on developing behavioral and clinic-based interventions for enhancing HIV care engagement.Currently, her NIMH K01 research supports the development of a mHealth intervention for Black MSM couples that leverages relationship dynamics to enhance dyadic coordination of HIV care engagement. Her other research includes enhancing successful aging among people living with HIV. Dr. Tan attempts to integrate her research with advocacy among clinicians: Her recent perspective in the Journal of General Internal Medicine outlines ways in which the current administration compromise the health of sexual and gender minorities of color.
Current Work
Dr. Tan's research projects include a NIMH K01 award to develop mHealth capabilities that target and leverage dyadic factors for enhancing HIV care engagement among Black gay and bisexual men. Advances in antiretroviral therapy mean that people who are HIV-positive can live healthy lives as long as they engage in HIV care and treatment. However, biomedical advances have not benefitted all populations equally, resulting in drastic disparities by racial/ethnic and sexual minority statuses. LetSync is a mobile health app that targets dyadic resources to enhance the health of the individual, based on social-psychological and behavioral evidence indicating that the quality and dynamics of the relationship between the patient and his/her primary partner (e.g., spouse) have profound effects on the patient’s healthcare engagement. LetSync targets dyadic interactions that bolster dyadic resources to help black gay couples living with HIV better engage in care.Few mHealth designs target the joint, dyadic experience of two users in facilitating interactions between them. This research is innovative for extending beyond the standard individual-based mHealth design to consider the interdependence between users that affect behavior. Findings from this research may be applicable to other types of dyads, such as the patient-provider, parent-child, and the caregiver-care-receiver dyads.
Research Area Keyword(s)
couples, HIV prevention, m-Health interventions, power, Social inequality