Amy Conroy, PhD
Faculty
I am a behavioral scientist with multidisciplinary training from the fields of public health, psychology, and sociology. Broadly, my research seeks to understand and intervene upon health behaviors related to HIV/AIDS, cardiometabolic disorders, alcohol use, mental health, and intimate partner violence. Specifically, I am interested in dyadic aspects of health within heterosexual couples. My research is grounded in theory from the field of relationship science, and employs mixed-methods and dyadic analysis techniques to understand couple-level health behavior. The majority of my research takes place in southern Africa and builds off a career development award to understand how relationship dynamics impact engagement in HIV care and treatment, which led to three follow-up studies. The first two studies aim to develop and evaluate couple-based approaches to reduce heavy alcohol use in South Africa and in Malawi. The third study is an observational cohort study in Malawi with couples living with HIV and cardiometabolic disorders to inform a model of multimorbidity disease management. I am also involved in other global health projects including an RCT of a couple-based intervention to increase engagement in HIV treatment in South Africa. Finally, my research leverages data from the Women's Interagency HIV/AIDS Study (now called the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study) to examine how gender-based violence impacts food insecurity and HIV treatment outcomes to develop trauma-informed health interventions for U.S. women. My program of research is funded by a diverse set of NIH institutes including the NIMH, NIAAA, NHLBI, and NIAID, and has led to over 40 publications in top journals.