Associate Professors Schenita Randolph and Ragan Johnson joined with community partners, Crystal Taylor and LaShea Stukes, in a recorded conversation highlighting the overall health of Black women in the U.S., disparities in health and health outcomes and inequities in health care. 

This recorded conversation will be a part of a salon-based intervention to promote the awareness, knowledge and uptake of PrEP among Black women in the United States South. This project is currently funded by Gilead Sciences with Randolph as principal investigator, Johnson as co-investigator and collaborator, and Mehri McKellar, director of Duke PrEP Clinic, School of Medicine. Taylor is the executive producer of an entertainment series developed in partnership with the community for the project. Stukes is one of the cast members for the series.  

Improving the uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among Black women in the United States will require implementation strategies capable of improving awareness, trust and stigma related to PrEP, all identified barriers to PrEP uptake for this population. Black women comprise only 13% of the U.S. but account for nearly two-thirds (64%) of new HIV infections among women in the U.S., and less than 1% of eligible Black women actually use PrEP. Disseminated through beauty salons, this culturally and socially relevant web-based intervention has the potential to have a widespread community reach.