Bryce Puesta Takenaka, MPH

Bryce Puesta Takenaka (he/him) is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. Prior to joining Yale, he actively collaborated on and led projects that centered co-location models and spatial epidemiological research designs to understand the patterns and burden of infectious diseases, such as STIs, HIV/AIDS, COVID-19. As a pre-doctoral fellow with the Yale AIDS Prevention Training Program through the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (T32MH02003116A1, Kershaw) and a researcher in the Empower Neighborhoods and Relationships to Improve Community Health (ENRICH) Lab, he is currently focusing on the optimization of location, along with social networks and smartphone interventions to improve uptake of HIV prevention. 

Bryce demonstrates the interest for improving the empiricism of the uptake and sustainability of interventions that intend to reduce HIV infections risk and prevent HIV transmission among sexual minority men of color. He is particularly interested in leveraging mixed-methods approaches to holistically understanding the role of mobile technology, geographic determinants, and social networks in HIV outcomes while centering critical race frameworks and historical harms rooted in structural violence. Bryce is committed to leveraging the voices sexual minorities of color for informed storytelling and sustainable health interventions.