Tamara Al Rawwad, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, earned the Abstract of Distinction Award for a collaborative research paper, at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society for Prevention Research held from May 31 to June 3 in Seattle.
For the process of the research paper, Rawwad worked with five other professors in Texas and Illinois to find data on the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in communities of color and the connection between the organizations that serve these communities and the clinics that would provide PrEP. They used the cities of Chicago and Houston as the samples. The work is titled “Community-Clinic Linkages for Promoting HIV Prevention: Organizational Networks for PrEP Client Referrals and Collaborations.”
“It’s about prevention, how can we use organizations … to prevent the transmission of HIV,” Rawwad said. “When we have organizations … that work with clinics to refer people who need education or medication or treatment, that’s very important. It’s a step to combatting the crisis of HIV, and we say ‘crisis’ because it still exists.”
She said this research was especially important to communities of color.
“People of color are the most affected by HIV in the country,” Rawwad said. “We wanted to look at how these clinics link between community organizations that serve people of color and how they would have links or connections to clinics that provide PrEP.”
The impact of the research could be useful to these communities going forward, she said.
“When we give money to these organizations … [the federal government asks] you how many other organizations you are working with or collaborating with because they now understand the importance of organization and collaboration,” Rawwad said.
Although conducting the research was important to the professor, she never expected to be given the Abstract of Distinction Award.
“I was actually happy and surprised at the same time,” Rawwad said.
While winning is an honor, she also noted the importance of this award to the UTRGV community.
“If I can go anywhere and show them an example of the excellence that we have, then that’s better opportunities for our graduates, for our professors, to also get this type of credit and recognition,” Rawwad said.
To illustrate, she spoke of a personal experience.
“People ask me ‘Where is [UTRGV]?’” Rawwad said. “And then you start talking about it and then they ask, ‘Oh, can you work with us with this?”
She plans to work on the issue of substance abuse, especially for younger people living in the Rio Grande Valley.
“My focus is now bringing attention and awareness … warning them about [substance abuse] is not encouraging them and that’s what I practice with my own kids,” Rawwad said.
Asked if she had any advice for students, Rawwad replied, “I encourage students to start thinking about what they want to do in life really early, because where I got to life is something I planned for tens of years ago.”
