Editors

Stefan Baral, MD

Stefan Baral, MD (he/him) is a physician epidemiologist and the Director of the Key Populations Program at the Center for Public Health and Human Rights in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Stefan completed his training at the University of Toronto in Community Medicine as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and Family medicine with the Canadian Council of Family Physicians and provides clinical care through the Inner-City Health Associates in Toronto. Through his role as the Director of the Key Populations Program in the CPHHR, Stefan has focused on trying to understand why people continue to be at risk for acquiring and transmitting HIV with a focus on the interactions of structural and network level determinants with individual-level proximal risks for HIV infection. Together with colleagues, Stefan focuses on using all scientific tools available to characterize the distribution of HIV risks including in countries with broadly generalized HIV epidemics. This work has included studying the burden of HIV and HIV-related vulnerabilities among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men; transgender women; people who use drugs; and sex workers in a range of HIV epidemic settings. In response to the disproportionate burden of HIV among populations with specific vulnerabilities, Stefan has participated in advancing the standardization of methods and measures in HIV-related implementation research to study how best to implement programs serving marginalized communities.

Shira Goldenberg, PhD

Shira Goldenberg, PhD (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the San Diego State University, affiliate faculty at UBC Division of Social Medicine. She was a research scientist at Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity (CGSHE), 2019-2024. She is also adjunct faculty in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Shira has conducted research on sexual health, violence, and human rights for im/migrants, sex workers, and young women since 2006. Her work has informed global policy initiatives and guidelines related to sex workers’, women’s and im/migrants’ health including through consultation roles with the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the International Association for Providers of AIDS Care.

Shira’s work has demonstrated the serious health and social inequities faced by marginalized im/migrant women in Canada and internationally, with a focus on sexual health, precarious labour conditions, gender-based violence, and access to health services. She is Principal Investigator of An Evaluation of Sex Workers’ Health Access (AESHA), an ongoing longitudinal, community-based cohort study focused on sexual health, human rights, and access to care among women sex workers in Vancouver, BC. Shira also leads the Evaluating Inequities in Refugee and Immigrant Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Access (IRIS) Study with colleagues in BC. Her research employs qualitative, epidemiological, and community-based research approaches. Dr. Goldenberg is passionate about the role of community engagement and partnerships for ensuring ethical and effective approaches to research, programmes, and policy to advance the health and wellbeing of marginalized communities.

Stefan Baral, MD

Shira Goldenberg, PhD

Ruth Morgan Thomas

Ruth Morgan Thomas (she/her) has been involved in sex work for 40 years — as a fulltime sex worker, as an academic researcher looking at HIV related risks in the sex industry and as a sex workers’ rights advocate campaigning for, developing and maintaining services and support for sex workers within a human rights and labour framework. Ruth was one of the founding members of the Scottish Prostitutes Education Project estabished in 1989 by sex workers for sex workers in Edinburgh, which she managed for 20 years.

In 2004, Ruth joined with other sex workers and allies across Europe to organize the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration and was chair of the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe until 2010. She was a founding member of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), which formed in 1992, and has been employed as their Global Coordinator since 2010. She currently co-chairs the UNAIDS Steering Committee on HIV and Sex Work on behalf of the NSWP, and represents NSWP in the recently formed Sex Worker Inclusive Feminist Alliance. In 2012, Ruth coordinated the Sex Worker Freedom Festival — the alternative IAC2012 event for sex workers and their allies in protest at the legal travel restrictions imposed upon sex workers by the US government — and is a member of the Core Group organising HIV2020 online.

Anna Forbes, MSS

Anna Forbes, MSS (she/her) began her career as a community organizer, writer, public policy strategist, and women’s health activist in 1978. She was hired by Philadelphia’s first HIV/AIDS organization in 1985 as their first case manager and worked with local organizations, including Philadelphia’s Health Department, to mobilize services and build understanding of HIV/AIDS. Anna’s output ranged from a series of children’s books on AIDS to a course on “public policy through the lens of HIV” taught at Bryn Mawr College. With ACT UP, she was repeatedly arrested in civil disobedience actions highlighting the HIV/AIDS crisis.

In 1998, Anna joined the Global Campaign for Microbicides, an international effort to address women’s urgent need for user-controlled HIV prevention tools. As Deputy Director, she worked with local GCM staff and civil society groups in Asia, Africa, North America and Europe, building demand for microbicide research and development. She specialized in mobilizing sex workers and young women, key constituencies particularly in need of such products. The 2012 International Microbicides Conference awarded her the Omololu Falobi Award for Excellence in HIV Prevention Research Community Advocacy. Now a writer and consultant, Anna works with organizations like UNAIDS, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, University of the Witswatersrand Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, the US Department Health and Human Services, and Open Society Foundations, among many others. Currently, she is working to raise public awareness of how criminalizing sex work both violates human rights and facilitates HIV transmission.