Overview
Marta Mulawa, PhD, MHS, has a primary appointment in the Duke University School of Nursing and a secondary appointment in the Duke Global Health Institute. Dr. Mulawa received her PhD in Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her MHS in International Health with a focus on Social and Behavioral Interventions from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to her faculty appointment, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Duke's NIH-funded Interdisciplinary Research Training Program in AIDS (IRTPA).
Dr. Mulawa’s research focuses on improving population health by examining and addressing social and behavioral determinants of HIV treatment and prevention outcomes in global settings. To inform the development of these HIV interventions, her research also aims to improve our understanding of how social networks influence various HIV-related behaviors.
Dr. Mulawa is the recipient of a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. The focus of this research is to identify social network-level factors associated with adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) among perinatally HIV-infected adolescents in Cape Town, South Africa, and to use this information to develop and pilot test a mobile health (mHealth) intervention to promote ART adherence by engaging the social networks of this population. She is also a Co-Investigator on a NIH-funded R01 evaluating the effectiveness of an online, mobile-optimized intervention to reduce stigma and improve HIV prevention and care behaviors among vulnerable populations in the United States.