Faith E. Fletcher, PhD, MA is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health in the Department of Health Behavior. The overall goal of Dr. Fletcher’s research program is to develop and implement community- and clinic-based social and behavioral research to reduce HIV-related disparities among African American women. Her research is grounded in methodological and theoretical approaches from public health, bioethics, and behavioral science. Additional training offered through Fordham University’s HIV Research Ethics Training Institute has positioned her to conduct empirical research ethics studies to examine and address health disparities among HIV-positive women with respect to the ethics of research participation. In particular, Dr. Fletcher seeks to develop ethical policies and strategies to alleviate vulnerability to HIV-related stigma associated with health care setting and research study engagement.
Dr. Fletcher is currently PI of a mixed-methods study to explore the role of HIV and intersectional stigmas on genomics research participation among minority women living with HIV. She also serves as a research consultant on Tuskegee University’s Community Engagement Core, funded through the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, to develop an educational delivery format to increase research participation and retention of local citizens. To date, Dr. Fletcher’s research has been funded through the University of Illinois at Chicago Program for Building Interdisciplinary Careers in Women's Health Research K12 Fellowship, Society of Family Planning, Center for AIDS Research, Center for Clinical and Translational Science, Kaiser Permanente Burch Minority Leadership Program, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Dissertation Program (R36). For her commitment to health disparities and social justice, Dr. Fletcher was a 2017 recipient of the National Minority Quality Forum’s 40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health Award.
Dr. Fletcher’s current contributions to the field of bioethics include serving on the American Public Health Association’s Ethics Code Task Force where she contributes to revising the national public health ethics code to reflect the changing public health environment. She is also co-chair of the Race and Culture/Ethnicity Affinity Group of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and member of the NIH Stakeholder Perspectives on APOL1 Genetics Testing II and NIH Ethical Issues in HIV Phylogenetic Analysis working groups.
Her educational background includes a BS in Biology from Tuskegee University; MA in Bioethics, Humanities, and Society from Michigan State University; and PhD in Health Promotion, Education and Behavior from the University of South Carolina. Dr. Fletcher also completed a National Cancer Institute R25T-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Behavioral Science at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She was an Associate Fellow for The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity from 2019-2020.