The Mark A. Etzel Scholarship was founded in honor of the late Mark A. Etzel, MPP, to provide opportunities and support for early-career HIV scientists or community researchers doing work related to policy impact, structural factors, or implementation science. The 2021 scholarship awardee was Dr. Anne E. Fehrenbacher. Please read more about Dr. Fehrenbacher below.
Anne E. Fehrenbacher, PhD, MPH is a Research Scientist in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Fehrenbacher is a social epidemiologist specializing in biobehavioral HIV prevention with sex workers and sexual and gender minority populations. Dr. Fehrenbacher received her PhD and MPH in Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and her BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Fehrenbacher completed postdoctoral training in HIV Combination Prevention at UCLA and a Fogarty GloCal Fellowship sponsored by the UC Global Health Institute with the Public Health Research Institute of India and Ashodaya Samithi in Mysore, Karnataka.
Dr. Fehrenbacher is the PI for two pilot studies on PrEP acceptability and adherence barriers with more than 400 sex workers across India and Co-PI for a study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of sex workers in West Bengal. Dr. Fehrenbacher is currently preparing to launch a new study on PrEP implementation science with hard-to-reach populations in India evaluating policy, structural, and organizational barriers to widespread rollout of PrEP. The Mark A. Etzel Scholarship will support Dr. Fehrenbacher’s research to develop scalable, sustainable, and effective PrEP implementation strategies with the ultimate goal of reducing disparities in HIV incidence in India and globally. Dr. Fehrenbacher will use the scholarship funds to cover transcription and translation of stakeholder interviews for this project in India.
Dr. Fehrenbacher’s current research focuses on harnessing technologies to improve PrEP uptake among stigmatized populations in India, particularly transgender sex workers. This scholarship will support Dr. Fehrenbacher’s efforts to build strong academic-community partnerships for implementation science research to improve access to PrEP services for the most socially and economically marginalized populations.
Outside of work, Dr. Fehrenbacher treasures spending time with her pups and experimenting in the kitchen to create her dream food truck menu. She is also an avid cinephile and loves to plan film festivals line-ups to enjoy during her time off.