Meet our Team

Trace Kershaw, PhD, focuses on the social and structural determinants of health (e.g., sexual health, substance use, mental health, reproductive health) among adolescents and emerging adults. His current focus is using innovative technologic methods to understand how social (e.g., how ones friends, partners, and family) and geographic context (e.g., how the places one goes and lives) influences their behaviors and health. Further, he is an expert in developing interventions aimed to improve the health and well being of adolescents and emerging adults.He is the Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Director of two HIV Training Grants (Yale AIDS Prevention Training, Research Education Institute for Diverse Scholars), and Director of the  the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA). He has twice won Mentor of the Year. He also serves on expert panels for the NIH and CDC and on several journal editorial boards.

Kayl is a post-graduate associate with the ENRICH lab. They graduated with honors in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020, followed by an MPH in Social and Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Health Justice from Yale School of Public Health in 2023. Kayl's research interests lie at the intersection of substance use, LGBTQ health, homelessness, and sex work. Their multidisciplinary approach enables them to tackle complex issues with sensitivity, inclusivity, and a focus on marginalized populations. They are currently involved in two studies: Project RENEW and the TRAC-ER Study. Project RENEW focuses on understanding the social and geographic influences on substance use recovery and treatment, utilizing technological advancements to explore relapse triggers during alcohol and substance use treatment. The TRAC-ER Study aims to develop a health promotion program using mobile apps and Bluetooth breathalyzers to reduce alcohol use among transgender individuals and queer men.

Frances is a postdoctoral fellow in the NIDA T32 program through the Division of Prevention and Community Research in the Department of Psychiatry. She earned a PhD in clinical (community) psychology from Bowling Green State University and is a registered board-certified art therapist. Frances’ research and clinical-community interventions focus on increasing health equity for people in recovery with intersecting marginalized identities. Branches of her research focus on the development and evaluation of 1) peer-led programs in healthcare organizational settings, 2) individual- and systems-level interventions to reduce stigma and structural discrimination towards people in recovery, and 3) scalable, digital or arts-based interventions for health promotion and prevention of mental health and substance use challenges.

Erin is the Administrative Program Director with the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) and the Project Manager with the ENRICH Team.

I am Bryce Puesta Takenaka, a queer, second-generation Filipino and Japanese writer, PhD student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health, and a T32 Research Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS. Born on the Mokupuni of O'ahu, Hawai'i, and raised in the Liliha-Kapalama and Ewa Beach neighborhoods, both of which continue to undergo momentous urban neighborhood changes. Moving through an occupied Hawai'i formed my research interests in grappling with the afterlives of settler colonialism, imperialism, racial capitalism, U.S. militarism, tourism, urbanism, and environmental injustice on queer and transgender health. I am constantly drawn to questions and debates that contend how Black and Pasifika Indigenous queer and transgender geographies are created, represented, occupied, shared, transformed, and imagined as they coalesce alongside movements toward anti-racist, anti-colonial, de-militarized, and abolitionist futures and possibilities that serve our lāhui (Nation to the Hawaiian Kingdom). 'A‘ohe pau ke ‘ike ka hālau ho‘okahi (all knowledge is not learned in a single place). I lean into transnational epistemologies to usher creative participatory and radical spatial practices to illuminate the contours and the ways colonial and racial violence constantly recalibrate through the built environment and how these modes of spatial production have progressed into skewed health inequities and environmental injustices. I earned a Master of Arts (MA) in History of Science and Medicine from Yale University, a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology from the College for Public Health and Social Justice at Saint Louis University and a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Lindenwood University.