Patrick Wilson, Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health
Dr. Patrick A. Wilson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Wilson received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology at New York University, his dissertation research won Jeffrey S. Tanaka Memorial Dissertation Award in Psychology given by the American Psychological Association. Dr. Wilson completed an NIMH Postdoctoral fellowship in Public Health, with a concentration in HIV/AIDS, at the Yale University School of Medicine’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS.
Dr. Wilson is an expert on HIV/AIDS in minority populations, particularly ethnic minority men who have sex with men (MSM) and HIV-positive MSM. His work focuses on vulnerability, risk, and health-seeking behaviors among diverse groups of MSM, community-based responses to HIV/AIDS, cultural competency in HIV interventions, and relationships between discrimination, mental health, identity, and risk. He recently completed several research projects, including one examining situational factors influencing risk behavior and mood among HIV-positive MSM and another exploring religion, sexuality, and responses to HIV/AIDS among Black MSM. Dr. Wilson was also involved in the implementation, data collection and data analysis of a secondary HIV prevention intervention for people living with HIV who experienced childhood sexual abuse. The intervention, called LIFT: Living in the Face of Trauma, was shown to be efficacious based on CDC PRS criteria and was recently added to the CDC’s Compendium of HIV Prevention Interventions with Evidence of Effectiveness.
Dr. Wilson is currently conducting research on social and situational factors affecting sexual risk-taking among young Black MSM, and is co-investigator on an NIMH-funded intervention study examining the efficacy of brief care-based HIV prevention for newly diagnosed MSM. He is currently completing work from an NICHD-funded study examining religious responses to HIV among Black gay men in New York City. Wilson has been a member of the NIH-funded Adolescent Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions (ATN) since 2008 and is the Principal Investigator for the ATN study “Development of a Secondary Prevention Intervention Targeting HIV+ Young BMSM.” He has published over a dozen peer-reviewed articles, two book chapters, fourteen conference abstracts, and has given over thirty presentations. He is an experienced methodologist and has collaborated with several community-based organizations to conduct research and provide technical assistance.