Dr. Tiarney Ritchwood is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and the Duke Global Health Institute. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Ritchwood’s scholarly approach to research is interdisciplinary in nature and integrates behavioral and public health sciences to understand the effects of race, gender and class on health behaviors and outcomes to affect socio-structural change. 

Her previous experiences have worked synergistically to inform her current lines of research, which aim to answer the following questions in both domestic and international populations: (1) how do individual, social and structural factors interact to influence adolescent progression along the HIV care cascade? (2) How do socio-structural determinants interact to shape and exacerbate disease clustering within specific cultural contexts that lead to health inequities? (3) How do you effectively mobilize personal networks to address syndemics (e.g., synergistic associations among HIV, non-communicable diseases and violence) in their own communities using participatory methods? And (4) What is the role of resiliency, spirituality and agency in chronic disease management?

For the past three years, she has led a mixed methods study that uses participatory methods to identify socio-structural determinants of treatment retention and adherence among adolescents living with HIV. Recent projects expand upon this line of research to understand how social network factors and social determinants of health interact to influence adolescent engagement in the HIV care continuum.