Jessica N. Casimir is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law where she is pursuing her PhD in Medical Sociology. Her research examines the social epidemiology of chronic disease and how it intersects with social inequality in the United States and South Africa. Her dissertation titled, “The Racialization of HIV/AIDS in Post-Apartheid South Africa” focuses on the racialization of HIV/AIDS in South Africa and how it shapes the lived experience and health status of certain groups based on their social status.
Jessica was awarded a Pre-Dissertation Research Award from the Center to conduct fieldwork for her dissertation proposal. She presented her findings from a qualitative coding project in collaboration with the Hillcrest AIDS Centre Trust in Durban on the physical and mental health impacts of social support groups on kinship caregivers of AIDS-affected orphans. Jessica plans to continue this project for her dissertation in which she will qualitatively examine how caregiver strain and burden influence the prevalence and management of hypertension and Types 2 diabetes in the peri-urban areas of KwaZulu-Natal. Jessica will be conducting her fieldwork in 2018-2019 and during her time there will be affiliated with the Center for Rural Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Prior to coming to University of Florida, Jessica was a research associate for the Centre for Social Science Research and teaching assistant at the African Gender Institute, both at the University of Cape Town. In addition, Jessica was a student-scholar for the Center for Global Security and International Affairs at Florida A&M where she was selected as the principal investigator in 2012 for a research project on women’s empowerment in South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland.