2014 Chicago LGBTQ Health & Wellness Conference

David W. Purcell, J.D., Ph.D., is the Deputy Director for Behavioral and Social Science of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He focuses on the implementation and evaluation of high impact prevention and oversees four branches that focus on behavioral research, communications, national evaluation of HIV programs, and statistics and resource allocation and prevention effectiveness modeling. From 2007 to 2012, Dr. Purcell was chief of the Prevention Research Branch. He also was responsible for overseeing the development of the funding announcements for both the ECHPP (2010) and the CAPUS (2012) demonstration projects. Dr. Purcell started work as a behavioral scientist in 1996 at the CDC, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Prevention Research Branch. Coinciding with the advent of HAART, he initially conducted research on some of CDC’s first behavioral prevention projects with HIV-positive persons, and he specifically focused on projects with gay and bisexual men and injection drug users. Prior to his work in public health, Dr. Purcell was a practicing attorney in Atlanta for three years.

Kathleen J. Sikkema, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Global Health, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University, is a clinical psychologist with emphases in health and community psychology. She is the Director of the Clinical Psychology Program at Duke, Director of the Social and Behavioral Science Core in Duke’s Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), Director of Global Mental Health and Director of Doctoral Studies at the Duke Global Health Institute. Dr. Sikkema, an expert in randomized, controlled HIV prevention and mental health intervention trials, has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for nearly 25 years. Sikkema’s intervention programs have been recognized by the CDC as “best evidence interventions” as well as NREPP (National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices). A primary focus of her research is the development of HIV-related mental health interventions to assist persons living with HIV who are coping with stressors such as traumatic stress due to childhood sexual abuse and newly diagnosed MSM, and she has expertise in community-level intervention trials and university-community collaboration.