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Gubrium Named Chair-Elect of the APHA Sexual and Reproductive Health Section

Aline Gubrium

2017-18 Family Research Scholar and Associate Professor of Community Health Education Aline Gubrium has been elected to serve as Chair-Elect of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). She begins serving immediately as the Chair Elect, for a one-year term and will take over the position of Chair beginning in December 2018.

The APHA was founded in 1872. It is the preeminent association for public health professionals, championing the health of all people and all communities and advocating for public health issues and policies backed by science. Formerly called the Population, Reproductive and Sexual Health (PRSH) Section, the Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Section of the APHA works to improve the health of women, men and children by ensuring that population, reproductive and sexual health remain major domestic and international priorities.

In her candidacy statement, Gubrium said her goals for the position would be to promote opportunities for public health students, faculty, and practitioners that 1) nurture and strengthen a fruitful multidisciplinarity in the section, across the biological and social sciences, humanities, and health professions; 2) encourage community-based research and engaged scholarship; 3) work from a reproductive justice orientation that promotes dignity and respect in research and practice; and 4) tap into the discipline’s critical and creative wellsprings and activist inclinations to address social inequality and health inequity.

“I’m thrilled to be elected by my peers to serve as Chair Elect,” Gubrium says. “I’m looking forward to working with a community of scholars, practitioners, and activists in the fields of public health, family planning, and sexual and reproductive justice. I’m particularly excited about working with the section, as well as collaborating with other APHA sections, to draft policy statements that are crucial given the current political context surrounding reproductive and sexual rights.”
 
A medical anthropologist working in the field of public health, Gubrium's research focuses on building "critical narrative interventions" to address health inequities and social inequality in the lives of marginalized young parents and families. Gubrium is an experienced digital storytelling facilitator and is at the forefront of researchers using the approach in research, intervention, and advocacy contexts. Recently, she has been funded by the Ford Foundation to conduct a digital storytelling project focused on sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice with young parenting Latinas and a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-funded project assessing the use of digital storytelling for sexual and reproductive health promotion with nulliparous, pregnant, and/or parenting young Latinas.
 
Currently, she serves as co-investigator on a research grant funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which uses a community-based participatory research approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a narratively enhanced intervention in lowering stress and risk of chronic diseases among men of color. Gubrium's 2013 and 2015 books explain participatory visual and digital methodologies for social research, health promotion and practice, and action.

Article courtesy of UMass School of Public Health & Health Sciences, August 2017.