I am a clinical and community psychologist who is also trained in public health, including epidemiology and intervention development, and quantitative research methods. Broadly, I am interested in health disparities that affect racial and ethnic minorities. More specifically, I am focusing on 1) increasing engagement in care and treatment for vulnerable patient populations (e.g., increasing retention in the HIV continuum of care among HIV-positive Black men) and 2) the effects of stigma and psychosocial distress on the mental and physical health of vulnerable populations.
Robert Williams is a native of San Francisco and was raised in Oakland, CA which is where he still calls home, and where he remains closely connected to his family, friends, and community. As a Black gay man, he has been working on the HIV needs of men since 1993, but even before then he was personally impacted by HIV as he saw close friends pass from the devastation of this disease. The memory of those friends and seeing other friends still contracting HIV fosters his ongoing commitment to this work.
