Research

Alida M. Bouris is an Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration. Her primary research area is in the development of family-based interventions to prevent HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, and unplanned pregnancies among Latino and African American adolescents and young adults. She also is working on the development of family-based interventions to support the health and well-being of sexual minority youth. Within these areas of research, Professor Bouris is primarily working with African American and Latino young men who have sex with men and with Latino adolescents and young adults. Nationwide, Latinos are currently the largest ethnic minority group in the U.S. and bear the highest burden of unintended pregnancies in adolescence and early adulthood. In addition, recent data on the incidence of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. indicate that young African American and Latino MSM are increasingly vulnerable to HIV infection during adolescence and early adulthood.

At SSA, Professor Bouris teaches courses on social work practice and cognitive-behavioral therapy. She has published extensively in the field of adolescent health and HIV prevention and is Co-Principal Investigator of the newly developed STI and HIV Intervention Network (SHINE) at SSA. The purpose of SHINE is to develop effective interventions that can address the disproportionate impact of STIs and HIV on ethnic minority communities in the U.S. In doing so, SHINE brings together a team of over a dozen interdisciplinary scholars to conduct research on developing interventions that integrate biomedical, behavioral, and structural approaches to HIV/STI prevention. Professor Bouris’s research has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Mental Health. Her current research is examining the role of families in supporting the sexual and mental health of young MSM.

Professor Bouris is a faculty affiliate of the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. She also is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California San Francisco.

Biography
Prior to joining SSA, Professor Bouris was a post-doctoral research scientist at the Columbia University School of Social Work. She also served as a social worker on a number of family-based research projects working with parents and adolescents in New York, NY. As part of this work, she provided clinical, psychosocial, and intervention services to parents on how to help their adolescent children avoid unintended pregnancies, STIs and HIV. 

Professor Bouris received her Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.S.W from the Columbia University School of Social Work and her B.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.