I am a behavioral scientist with multidisciplinary training from the fields of public health, psychology, anthropology, and sociology. My program of research is funded by a diverse set of NIH institutes including the NIMH, NIAAA, and NHLBI, with additional funding from NICHD and NIAID for collaborative and smaller projects. Broadly, my research seeks to understand and intervene upon health behaviors related to HIV/AIDS, cardiometabolic disorders, alcohol consumption, mental health, and intimate partner violence. Specifically, I am interested in dyadic aspects of health within heterosexual and same-sex couples. My research is grounded in theory from the field of relationship science, and employs mixed-methods and innovative dyadic analysis techniques (qualitative and quantitative) to understand couple-level health behavior. My primary line of research takes place in southern Malawi and builds off a K01 career development award to understand how relationship factors and primary partners impact engagement in HIV care and treatment, which led to two new projects. First, we are currently developing and testing an economic and relationship-strengthening intervention for HIV-affected couples who drink alcohol to ultimately reduce heavy alcohol use, improve relationship functioning, and improve adherence to ART and HIV clinical outcomes. Second, we are conducting an observational cohort study with couples living with HIV and cardiometabolic disorders (e.g., hypertension) 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 care and treatment in South Africa and the Adolescent Shamba Maisha study in Kenya, which examines the impact of an agricultural livelihood intervention on young adolescent girls' sexual and reproductive health, and parent-child relationships. 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 in an effort to develop effective, trauma-informed health interventions for vulnerable U.S. women. In summary, my research has led to over 30 publications (19 are first-authored) and I am now transitioning into a senior author role on some of my publications with mentees.