Professor and Chair
George Washington University
Deanna Kerrigan is a social and behavioral scientist whose research over the last 25 years has focused on the role of socio-structural factors that shape the health of underserved groups. She has led multiple NIH-funded studies to develop community-driven interventions including for marginalized women at heightened risk for HIV infection in Latin America and the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. These interventions have been recognized as international best practice models for community empowerment-based HIV prevention and have been highlighted in World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UNFPA and World Bank reports, technical guidelines and implementation tools.
Dr. Kerrigan is Professor and Chair of the Department of Prevention and Community Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington (GW) University. She directs the Social and Behavioral Core of the DC Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and was previously the Co-Director of the Prevention Core of the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) CFAR. Before joining GW, Dr. Kerrigan was Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center on Health, Risk and Society (CHRS) at American University and was on faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for 15 years. At JHU, she directed a large-scale USAID-funded, global HIV prevention implementation science portfolio, Research to Prevention (R2P) that spanned 18 countries. Dr. Kerrigan also previously served as a Program Officer for the Ford Foundation in Brazil.