Dr. Allison Mathews

Dr. Allison Mathews serves as Executive Director of the Gilead COMPASS Faith Coordinating Center and Research Fellow in Faith and Health in the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University. She also serves as the founder and CEO of a consulting company, Community Expert Solutions, Inc., which uses technology, social marketing and community engagement to innovate clinical research engagement for underrepresented groups. She specializes in integrating technology, social marketing, community engagement and social science to examine the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and religiosity on HIV-related stigma and to innovate clinical research engagement and access to health care for underserved populations. Dr. Mathews has been invited to speak about HIV and COVID-19 on national and international platforms, including TEDxCaryWomen. Dr. Mathews and Ms. Kimberly Knight co-founded and had December 14 officially declared by the state of North Carolina as HIV Cure Research Day to raise awareness about HIV cure research and encourage community involvement in ending the HIV epidemic. During her tenure as Executive Director, she and her team have launched the North Carolina HIV & Faith Ambassador Program, which boasts 50 faith leaders and 10 medical providers and the Black Faith & HIV Initiative, which offers self-paced online educational modules to educate the public about how to implement HIV and faith programming in their communities. They also hosted the inaugural “Proclamation at the Intersections: Faith, Healing, and HIV” conference in June 2022 in Dallas, TX. She earned her BA in Sociology from Howard University and her MA and PhD in Sociology from UNC-Chapel Hill. She completed her postdoctoral work at UNC-Chapel Hill in the Department of Social Medicine and the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Disease.

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