Guest Speaker Bio - Dr. Gail Wyatt
Dr. Gail E. Wyatt is a Clinical Psychologist, board certified Sex Therapist and Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior at UCLA.
She is a graduate of Fisk University and received her doctorate at UCLA. For the first 17 years of her career, Dr. Wyatt was the first ethnic minority to receive training as a sexologist. She received a prestigious NIMH Research Scientist Career Development Award to develop culturally congruent measures, conceptual frameworks and interventions to capture sexual decision making among ethnic minority men and women within a socio cultural framework. She was the first African American woman in California to receive a license to practice Psychology, and the first African American woman Ph.D. to reach full Professor in a school of Medicine. Her research examines the consensual and abusive sexual relationships of women and men, the biological and behavioral effects of these experiences on their psychological well-being and the cultural context of risks for STIs and HIV. She has conducted national and international research funded by the NIMH, NIDA, State and private funders since 1980. Dr. Wyatt has been selected as a senior research fellow by the COBB Institute for the National Medical Association.
Dr. Wyatt directs the Sexual Health program, the Phodiso Training Project in South Africa, the HIV/AIDS Translational Training Program, the Center for Culture, Trauma and Mental Health Disparities, and is an Associate Director of the UCLA AIDS Institute. She has been internationally recognized for her work in Jamaica, Africa, India and most recently, South Africa, where she conducts a longitudinal study of the aftermath of rape among South African women. Among the 6 books, her best selling book, "Stolen Women: Reclaiming our Sexuality, Taking back our Lives" (John Wiley and Sons) provides the historical roots of violence and racism that continue to present challenges for African Americans today, In "No More Clueless sex", written with Dr, Lewis Wyatt, they both provide clinical information to assist men and women in understanding their bodies and sexuality.
Dr. Wyatt has published over 196 journal articles and book chapters, makes countless presentations internationally, and has been recognized for her mentoring and research by the American Psychological Association, as well as state and international organizations and churches. She is the recipient of numerous awards. Dr. Wyatt has provided Congressional testimony 9 times during the Clinton and Obama administrations. She and her team were first to be funded by NIMH to develop an intervention for HIV positive women with histories of sexual violence, entitled "Healing Our Women". She was the initiator of a multi-disciplinary team that developed and tested the first culturally congruent intervention for HIV sero-discordant African American couples in four cities with NIMH for the past 8 years. This is the first intervention developed and tested for self identified heterosexual male and female couples, which represents the most common mode of HIV transmission in the world.
