Rita Melendez, Research Faculty
Rita M. Melendez, Ph.D. is the Chair of Sexuality Studies at SFSU and an Associate Professor. She is also a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University in 2000. In 2002, she earned a Masters Degree in Biostatstics from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Dr. Melendez was a postdoctoral research fellow at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University, where she received a National Research Service Award Research Training Fellowship (mentored by Anke A. Ehrhardt). She specializes in combined quantitative and qualitative methods in researching HIV issues as they relate to minority women (Melendez, et.al., 2003). She has worked extensively on one of the first gender-specific HIV prevention programs ever conducted on women, Project FIO, and has also worked with a number of CBOs in conducting HIV research. As a team member of the Sexuality and Training and Research (STAR) program at the HIV Center, she served as an instructor and mentor to CBOs conducting research projects. She worked with Dr. Cynthia Gomez on a project assisting CBOs with HIV research from 2006 to 2009. She teaches several graduate-level methods courses at SFSU. Dr. Melendez has worked on a number of research projects and has managed her own research projects. She received a pilot grant at the HIV Center and a Minority Supplement to an NICHD-funded study of adolescent sexuality where she examined safer sex behaviors, acculturation and gender among Latino adolescents. She participated in the M-RISP (Minority Research Infrastructure Program; funded by NIH) where she was mentored by Rafael Diaz (PI). She is currently conducting a research project (funded through the HISTP program at Columbia University's School of Social Work) interviewing 40 Latina and African American women about their religious beliefs and their preferences for HIV prevention in religious organizations. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Public Health, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Women and Health, AIDS and Behavior, Journal on Interpersonal Violence and Archives of Sexual Behavior. Dr. Melendez can be reached via email at rmelende@sfsu.edu.