Christopher Wheldon, PhD

Chris is the primary investigator of this study. He is an assistant professor of public health at Temple University. His goal is to promote health equity for LGBTQ+ communities.

Cristian Flores
Research Assistant

Cristian is a medical student at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. His current interests involve clinical healthcare interventions and health disparities among marginalized communities (specifically the LGBTQ+ and ethnic/racial minority communities).

Caseem Luck, MS
Research Coordinator

Caseem received his B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Millersville University in 2019 and an M.S. in Communication for Development and Social Change from Temple University’s Klein College of Communications in 2020. Throughout his undergraduate and graduate career, Caseem has sought to use storytelling as a way to amplify marginalized voices within his local community. Caseem’s research areas have included understanding the meaning-making practices of refugee women pursuing post-secondary education, the experiences of first-generation Latinx college students at Predominantly White Institutions, and the disparities in access to digital technologies for refugee/immigrant-serving organizations in Philadelphia during COVID-19. Caseem hopes to further use storytelling to help inform relevant health communication practices for underserved communities of color in Philadelphia. 

Kaite Singley, MPH
Research Coordinator

Katie recently graduated from Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health Community Health and Prevention Program. She received her undergraduate degree from Loyola University Maryland where she majored in Psychology and minored in Statistics. Her research interests include substance use, urban health, health disparities, and public health ethics. She previously worked for the Health Equity Advancement Lab (HEAL) where she was involved in various research projects that examine the role of harm reduction interventions in alleviating the opioid epidemic. Her goal is to conduct community-based research that can be used to empower individuals in their health-decision making and create equitable and transformative policy.

Imani Wilson-Shabazz, MPH
Research Assistant

Imani Wilson-Shabazz is a doctoral student in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at the College of Public Health at Temple University. She is a recent graduate of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, earning an MPH in Community Health Sciences with a certificate in Population and Reproductive Health. She completed her undergraduate studies in Cognitive Science (BA) and Gender Studies and Human Sexuality (BA) with honors from the University of Southern California. Her previous research projects have focused on the negative effects of abstinence-only sex education programs on black girls in the South, BDSM community engagement as self-care practices for women of color, and unintended pregnancy prevention in trans-masculine individuals. More broadly, Imani’s research centers on transforming family planning systems and institutions to empower queer individuals of color to make informed and affirmed reproductive choices.