Pride Edition 6: Dr. Stefan Baral: All Roads Lead to Stigma

Dr. Stefan Baral is a physician epidemiologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH). He is the Key Populations Program Director at the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at JHSPH. Stefan has also been involved in HIV epidemiology, prevention, and implementation research focused on the epidemiology, human rights contexts, and effective interventions for gay men and other men who have sex with men, transgender women, and female sex workers across Western and Central, and Southern Africa and parts of Asia. Find more of Stefan's work here, including on COVID-19, and you can follow him on Twitter here. 

Dr. Stefan Baral discusses his journey to focusing on human rights, stigma and HIV. Stefan's work on stigma is sex positive and highlights the importance of people being able to have the sex they want. He discusses how stigma manifests in assumptions and poor health services. Stefan talks about the need to consider the complexity of stigma, its pervasive negative effects on communities and their wellbeing, and the importance of an equity framing of public health and human rights. We talk about being inspired by persons who work hard on their craft to achieve excellence. He shares his favourite place to eat fresh fish in Senegal. Stefan reminds the listeners to not discount their ideas before they are released in the world.

Episode hosted by Dr. Carmen Logie. Original music and podcast produced by Cozmic Cat. Supported by funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Canada Research Chairs program.