Melissa Watt is an Associate Professor at the University of Utah, where she has a research appointment in Population Health Sciences and a teaching appointment in the Honors College. Her research focuses on understanding and addressing gender-specific health issues in sub-Saharan Africa, with specific attention to HIV, substance use, and mental health, and the application of mixed methods to understand health behavior and develop culturally salient interventions. She is currently collaborating with faculty at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi, Tanzania on a research program addressing HIV stigma. In the Honors College, she directs an integrated pathway “Health in Context” that includes summer coursework at Ensign College in Kpong, Ghana.

Before joining the faculty at the University of Utah, Dr. Watt was a DGHI faculty member for twelve years, where she worked with the Duke Center for AIDS Research and served as the Director of Graduate Studies in Global Health.

Dr. Watt received her PhD in Health Behavior from the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina and an MA in Gender and Development at the University of Sussex (UK).