Roles:
- Postdoctoral Fellow, CIRA
Contact:
Biography:
Dr. Mohammed-Rabiu Abubakari's program of research broadly focusses on optimizing HIV prevention and treatment outcomes in informal settlement communities by using community participatory approaches to improving access to human and health services, with a special interest in Zongo (predominantly Muslim and Hausa speaking enclaves) in West Africa. His concern with access is multi-sectoral and includes HIV services, healthy food, and community development needs, such as equitable housing and transportation. His work here at CIRA focuses on investigating factors affecting the implementation of an intersectional stigma-reduction intervention among healthcare facilities in Ghana and its impact on sexual health service access and clinical outcomes of sexual and gender minority men and women. His future work will center on the implementation of evidence-based behavioral interventions in conjunction with health equity promotion approaches to improving sexual health among sexual minorities in Muslim communities. Dr. Abubakari’s participatory focus reflects his belief on the need for health and human services intervention planning and implementation to assume bottom-up approaches – where scholars work with intended beneficiaries to build healthy communities using community-level priorities, and to ensure equity and justice in the distribution of resources.
Before joining Yale, he was a postdoctoral associate in the National Science Foundation-funded Smart and Connected Communities Program in the School of Social Welfare, at the State University of New York at Albany. He is a professionally trained planner and also worked in the Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Department of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in Accra, Ghana. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Planning from the University for Development Studies (Ghana), a Masters in Urban Planning and Applied Geography, and a Ph.D. in Community and Public Affairs (population health sub-specialty) both from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Research Interest/Expertise
- Implementation science
- HIV prevention and treatment
- Healthy and sustainable communities
- Mixed methods
- Participatory approaches
- Geographic information systems (GIS) – Spatial issues
