PhD Alumni Spotlight Series - Christina Ross, PhD, RN

“Addressing Black female adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health disparities in the United States”
A lecture by Christina Ross, PhD, RN, PhD alumna, Jonas Nurse Scholar alumna, and an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut School of Nursing

Now an assistant professor at UConn Storrs in the School of Nursing, Ross is a former post-doctoral scholar working in interdisciplinary research in child and adolescent primary care at the UMN, the former Oleda D. Casscells Fellow at the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center, and a former NIMHD graduate research mentor, scholar, and co-investigator who earned a PhD in nursing from UVA in 2019.

Recipient of a UConn STEAM Innovation grant for a study involving the promotion of Black female adolescents in foster care and their sexual and reproductive health using an mHealth app called “Lela – Black Beauty,” Ross has also earned grants from UConn Health’s Connecticut Convergence Institute for Translation in Regenerative Engineering Pre-K Scholar Career Development, UConn’s InCHIP for new investigators, and while at UVA earned the Barbara Parker Dissertation Funding Award.

A member of the Eastern Nursing Research Society, the Society of Behavioral Health and Medicine, and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, Ross has authored many publications on topics ranging from improving providers’ communication with parents and adolescents, fetal alcohol syndrome awareness and risk behaviors, knowledge of sexually transmitted infections among Black adolescents in foster care, adolescents in foster care, parents’ sources of adolescent sexual health information, and IPV awareness among South African university women. At UVA, her dissertation study—“African American female adolescents’ perspectives regarding their sexual and reproductive health needs while in foster care: A qualitative descriptive study”—explored factors contributing to sexual and reproductive health disparities for female youth in foster care, one of the first to gain Black female adolescents’ perspectives about their sexual and reproductive health.

Please email sonce@virginia.edu to register; closer to the event, you will receive the Zoom link.