Monika Doshi is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health, Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences. Monika has consulted on public health research and practice projects in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America for over 20 years. Her research areas include HIV prevention, care, treatment; mental health; immigration and health; public health and human rights; women’s health; gender and sexuality; stigma and discrimination; qualitative and mixed methods; community-based participatory research; intervention development; monitoring and evaluation; health equity; and policy.
Specifically, Monika has conducted HIV/AIDS research working with key populations (communities at greater risk for HIV acquisition) in Asia and Africa. In collaboration with the University of Manitoba, she has examined individual, social, environmental, and structural factors that shape the HIV vulnerability of male sex workers in Kenya and the social and cultural issues related to introducing future HIV vaccines among female sex workers and men who have sex with men in China, India, and Kenya. She has partnered with the University of Connecticut’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy on an NIH funded HIV prevention research project in South Africa to study engagement and retention in care of recently diagnosed HIV-positive individuals who are not eligible for antiretroviral medications. She has also collaborated with the Enhancing Care Foundation and the Eastern and Southern Africa Knowledge Hubs Network (Kenya, South Africa, Sudan, and Uganda) on a blended learning training course for the prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among men who have sex with men and transgender people. As a Connecticut Health Foundation Health Leadership Fellow and through funding from Yale University, Monika conducted research on HIV risk behaviors and prevention needs of transgender populations in partnership with the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition, the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective and the Institute for Community Research.
Monika has also worked on chronic disease prevention in Bangladesh, China, India, England, Mexico, Tanzania, and the United States. She began her work in public health and human rights with Avahan, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s India AIDS Initiative, through the American India Foundation’ s William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service. She was a member of the technical team that initiated the first HIV prevention program in the state of Karnataka through BMGF funding. More recently, she has expanded her research to examine the impact of structural, community, and interpersonal level factors within the context of immigration on the health and wellbeing of Latinx communities.
Monika is the Founder and Principal of Saath, a public health consulting firm. She received her Ph.D. in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Monika holds a Master in Public Health and a Certificate in Health and Human Rights from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
