Wendee M. Wechsberg

Last updated
Wendee M. Wechsberg
Born
Wendee Mara Wechsberg

May 21,1954
Miami, Florida
Alma materUniversity of South Florida, Vanderbilt University, North Carolina State University
Known forNIH-funded HIV biobehavioral scientist & originator of the Women's CoOp and Health CoOp HIV prevention intervention series for women and couples.

Wendee M. Wechsberg (born May 21,1954) is an American biobehavioral social science researcher. She has utilized mixed methods research to develop and evaluate HIV prevention interventions for diverse populations, focusing on underserved women, adolescent girls, and couples who use substances since 1994. She has focused her career in the scientific field of addressing gender inequalities in relation to the syndemic factors of substance use, HIV, and gender violence. [1] She is known for the creation of the evidence-based Women’s CoOp [2] [3] HIV prevention intervention for women who used crack-cocaine and subsequent age-, gender- and culturally-sensitive global adaptations across more than three decades of HIV research. [4]

Contents

Early life and education

Wechsberg was born in Miami, Florida on May 21,1954 to Drs. Florence and Henry Wechsberg. In 1975, Wechsberg received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of South Florida and earned her Master of Science degree in Human Developmental Counseling [5] from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University in 1979. She was awarded a PhD in Community Psychology from North Carolina State University in 1993.

Career History

Dr. Wechsberg started her earlier career in 1977 as a substance use treatment director in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Since 1999, she has served as the Principal Researcher and Director of the Substance Use, Gender, and Applied Research (SUGAR) Program [6] at RTI International. Wechsberg has held adjunct professor positions in Health, Policy and Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health, [7] Psychology in the Public Interest at North Carolina State University (NCSU), [8] and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. [9]

She has been affiliated with the National Association for Addiction Professionals, [10] Addiction Professionals of North Carolina, [11] American Association of Community Psychology, American Psychological Association, American Public Health Association, College on Problems of Drug Dependence, and the International AIDS Society.

Wechsberg has authored over 185 peer-reviewed publications on HIV, substance use, and gender, and has delivered more than 100 conference presentations. [12] Wechsberg’s career has been supported by 15 National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is the creator of the Women's CoOp, [13] an HIV prevention program [14] tailored for women who use substances, conceived in 1998, with subsequent global adaptations including the Women’s Health CoOp, [15] the Young Women's CoOp, [16] and Couples Health CoOp [17] series focused on changing the gender norms. [18] [19]

Honors

Based on her long history of funded research from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, Wechsberg was ranked third among those researchers who received HIV/AIDS investigator-initiated grants. [20] Dr. Wechsberg was selected to the 2022 Forbes Women 50 over 50 Impact list. [21] Selected in 2023 and 2024 for North Carolina’s Top Women Leaders in Women We Most Admire. [22] [23] Wechsberg has been honored with several company-sponsored awards throughout her career at RTI.

References

  1. ↑ www.bizjournals.com https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2007/01/08/story14.html . Retrieved September 18, 2024.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  2. ↑ "RePORT ⟩ RePORTER". reporter.nih.gov. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  3. ↑ Wechsberg, Wendee M.; Lam, Wendy K. K.; Zule, William A.; Bobashev, Georgiy (July 2004). "Efficacy of a woman-focused intervention to reduce HIV risk and increase self-sufficiency among African American crack abusers". American Journal of Public Health. 94 (7): 1165–1173. doi:10.2105/ajph.94.7.1165. ISSN   0090-0036. PMC   1448416 . PMID   15226138.
  4. ↑ Wechsberg, Wendee M; Browne, Felicia A; Ellerson, Rachel Middlesteadt; Zule, William A (September 1, 2010). "Adapting the evidence-based Women's CoOp intervention to prevent human immunodeficiency virus infection in North Carolina and international settings". North Carolina Medical Journal. 71 (5): 477–481. doi:10.18043/ncm.71.5.477. ISSN   0029-2559. PMC   3131687 . PMID   21473554.
  5. ↑ "Human Development Counseling (M.Ed.) -". Peabody College of Education and Human Development. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  6. ↑ "Substance Use, Gender & Applied Research (SUGAR) Program". www.rti.org. April 30, 2021. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  7. ↑ "Health Policy and Management". UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  8. ↑ "Department of Psychology". Department of Psychology. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  9. ↑ "Duke Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences". psychiatry.duke.edu. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  10. ↑ "The National Association for Addiction Professionals".
  11. ↑ "Home". Addiction Professionals of North Carolina. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  12. ↑ "My Bibliography". www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  13. ↑ Wechsberg, Wendee M.; Lam, Wendy K. K.; Zule, William A.; Bobashev, Georgiy (July 2004). "Efficacy of a Woman-Focused Intervention to Reduce HIV Risk and Increase Self-Sufficiency Among African American Crack Abusers". American Journal of Public Health. 94 (7): 1165–1173. doi:10.2105/ajph.94.7.1165. PMC   1448416 . PMID   15226138.
  14. ↑ "The Basics of HIV Prevention". hivinfo.nih.gov. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  15. ↑ Wechsberg, Wendee M; Zule, William A; Ndirangu, Jacqueline; Kline, Tracy L; Rodman, Nathaniel F; Doherty, Irene A; Novak, Scott P; van der Horst, Charles M (October 15, 2014). "The biobehavioral Women's Health CoOp in Pretoria, South Africa: study protocol for a cluster-randomized design". BMC Public Health. 14: 1074. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-14-1074 . ISSN   1471-2458. PMC   4287508 . PMID   25318563.
  16. ↑ Wechsberg, Wendee M.; Browne, Felicia A.; Zule, William A.; Novak, Scott P.; Doherty, Irene A.; Kline, Tracy L.; Carry, Monique G.; Raiford, Jerris L.; Herbst, Jeffrey H. (2017). "Efficacy of the Young Women's CoOp: An HIV Risk-Reduction Intervention for Substance-Using African-American Female Adolescents in the South". Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse. 26 (3): 205–218. doi:10.1080/1067828X.2016.1260511. ISSN   1067-828X. PMC   5568635 . PMID   28845096.
  17. ↑ Wechsberg, Wendee M.; El-Bassel, Nabila; Carney, Tara; Browne, Felicia A.; Myers, Bronwyn; Zule, William A. (February 24, 2015). "Adapting an evidence-based HIV behavioral intervention for South African couples". Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy. 10 (1): 6. doi: 10.1186/s13011-015-0005-6 . ISSN   1747-597X. PMC   4344778 . PMID   25888856.
  18. ↑ "Best-Evidence Woman-Focused HIV Prevention (Adaptations of the Women's CoOp)" . Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  19. ↑ April 2014, Adva Saldinger // 03 (April 3, 2014). "#SheBuilds boys and men". Devex. Retrieved September 18, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  20. ↑ Cohen, Jon (July 25, 2008). "Where Have All the Dollars Gone?". Science. 321 (5888): 520. doi:10.1126/science.321.5888.520. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   18653878.
  21. ↑ "RTI's Wendee Wechsberg recognized by Forbes". www.rti.org. October 14, 2022. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  22. ↑ Admire, Women We. "Women We Admire Announces Top 50 Women Leaders of North Carolina for 2024". www.prweb.com. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  23. ↑ Admire, Women We. "Women We Admire Announces Top 50 Women Leaders of North Carolina for 2023". www.prweb.com. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
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