Emilie E. Doan Van, MPH is a recent graduate from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in May 2018 with a Master’s of Public Health in Health and Social Behavior, concentrated in Social Determinants of Health and Disparities. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Medical Sociology from the University of California, San Diego. While at the UCSD Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Health, she worked as a Research Associate and Study Coordinator for Dr. Jamila K. Stockman and Dr. Laramie Smith in the project: The Role of Peer Navigators and Social Support in the HIV Care Continuum. Emilie was responsible for conducting interview transcriptions and audio file quality control, task management, and supervising research interns, but her favorite role was conducting in-depth interviews with women living with HIV (WLHA).

Driven by her work at iSTRIVE Emilie worked as a researcher on multiple projects while completing her MPH to understand and reduce health inequities in marginalized populations in the United States. These include researching mental health disparities in Somali Bantu and Bhutanese families in Boston and working with Advocates for Youth to understand the sexual and reproductive health needs  of refugee adolescent girls in Atlanta.

Working as a researcher at iSTRIVE also inspired Emilie’s interest in utilizing qualitative research to illuminate the experiences of marginalized populations and provide greater depth to bolster quantitative findings on health disparities. Bisexual individuals experience significant health disparities unique from other sexual minorities but little qualitative research examines the role discrimination has in driving these disparities. As her Master’s thesis, Emilie worked with researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan, utilizing qualitative analysis to investigate bisexual and non-monosexual adults’ perceptions of how discrimination has adversely affected their health, as well as elucidate discriminatory experiences unique to bisexual individuals, and coping mechanisms that are helpful when experiencing discrimination. A publication based on their findings is due to be published in Archives of Sexual Behavior in January 2019.