Senior Postdoctoral Fellows Present Latest Research
The Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing’s (ISGMH) senior cohort of postdoctoral fellows Casey Xavier Hall, Ph.D., M.P.H.; Elissa Sarno, Ph.D.; and Ashley Kraus, Ph.D., presented at the Current Issues in LGBTQ Health lecture series event hosted on February 16, 2021. ISGMH faculty member and interim Associate Director Kathryn Macapagal, Ph.D., moderated the event and Q&A.
Casey Xavier Hall, Ph.D., M.P.H., (he/him) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ISGMH. He received his Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education and his M.P.H. in Global Health from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. His research focuses on social influences on sexual health, violence, and substance use disparities. During his doctoral training, his dissertation examined minority stress and intimate partner violence among bisexual women. At ISGMH, he works primarily on the RADAR and D2D projects. Xavier Hall is interested in multi-level influences on LGBTQ population health, particularly the intersections of violence, substance use, and sexual health.
In his talk, Xavier Hall discussed whether or not researchers think alternatives, like long acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), may alleviate concerns around PrEP adherence or discontinuation. Daily oral PrEP first became available to the general public in 2012, and while it’s highly effective, there has been a continued issue with sub-optimal uptake, adherence, and discontinuation.
“An area that I’m interested in is the concept of seasons of PrEP or seasons of risk. Researchers blame these periods of time in someone’s life where they use PrEP, and then cease, and perhaps use PrEP again as relating to perceived risk in someone’s life. And that’s generally around things like relationships changes or other shifts that might shift someone’s self-identification around risk for HIV transmission,” said Xavier Hall.
Elissa Sarno, Ph.D., (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ISGMH. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. During her graduate training, Sarno’s research focused on psychosocial functioning of sexual minority individuals and basic affective and cognitive processes related to sexual health among men who have sex with men. At ISGMH, Sarno works primarily on 2GETHER, an innovative HIV prevention and relationship education program for young male couples that integrates group and individual couples sessions to address the needs of HIV-positive and HIV-negative young men. Additionally, Sarno is interested in the role that perceptions of sexual partners play in the likelihood of engaging in sexual risk behaviors, particularly when using phone applications to find sexual partners.
Sarno’s presentation “‘Someone to Share the Burden’: Stress and Coping in Sexual and Gender Minority Relationships” explored relationship quality and mental health in sexual and gender minorities (SGM) assigned female at birth (AFAB).
“SGM AFAB have greater mental health and substance use disparities than SGM assigned male at birth (AMAB). Other research has shown that SGM AFAB are more likely than SGM AMAB to be in longer-term relationships. If you put those two things together, if we can see that relationships are beneficial for mental health and substance use, this can be an important opportunity to capitalize on those health benefits and reduce health disparities for SGM AFAB folks,” said Sarno.
Sarno’s research with FAB 400, a longitudinal cohort study of young SGM AFAB in Chicago, included 213 individuals in relationships with the same partner for at least three waves of data collection happening every six months over a year and a half. Using these data allowed Sarno to evaluate a person’s associations over time, fluctuation in relationship quality, and fluctuation in mental health and substance use.
Ashley Kraus, Ph.D., (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ISGMH. She received her Ph.D. in Mass Communications from Indiana University. During her graduate training Kraus’s research generally focused on the intersection of media, mental health, gender, and sexuality. More specifically, Kraus explored the effect of body-positive media on discrete emotions, self-discrepancies, and body-image outcomes. At ISGMH, she has worked on the Looking and ASAP projects. Additionally, Ashley is interested in the role media and technology play in regards to health disparities in SGM youth, as well as the potential for media as a tool to help repair these disparities. “Part of my research focuses on adolescent SGM, their use of cigarettes and vaping products, and the use of tailored social media interventions,” said Kraus. The popularity of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) increased 78% from 2017 to 2018, according to the National Youth Tobacco Survey. SGM adolescents were also twice as likely to use tobacco products compared to heterosexual, cisgender adolescents, which places them higher at risk for tobacco-related health problems.
There has been limited research categorizing tobacco use and ENDS use in SGM communities.
“Because of that, social media represents a critical modality for delivering SGM specific intervention material by meeting youth where they are,” said Kraus.