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FHS postdoctoral fellows Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez (left) and Amanda Rowlands (right) each secured a Michael Smith Health Research BC Research Trainee Award in the 2026 competition. Background photo: RDNE

FHS researchers secure Health Research BC Research Trainee Awards

September 18, 2026

Adapted from Michael Smith Health Research BC (original here) 

Two researchers from SFU's Faculty of Health Sciences have each successfully secured a prestigious Research Trainee Award from Michael Smith Health Research BC.

Please join us in celebrating Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez and Amanda Rowlands!

The Research Trainee awards support emerging researchers - primarily postdoctoral and health professional investigators - by offering vital funding needed to focus on high-quality research that is carried out in British Columbia. 

Learn more about each researcher's project in their own words:

Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez

Examining the intersectional impacts of public health surveillance on racialized and migrant women living with HIV across the HIV Care Cascade in British Columbia

The HIV Care Cascade is a public health surveillance framework used to measure progress through HIV care towards viral undetectability (i.e., a viral load so low that HIV cannot be transmitted). Women living with HIV (WLWH) are less likely to achieve viral undetectability due to various biological and social factors. As such, they may be subject to higher levels of public health surveillance. However, literature suggests surveillance is stigmatizing to WLWH because it tends to label certain individuals as higher risk than others. The unintended consequences of surveillance are most concerning for African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) and migrant WLWH because they face greater barriers to healthcare and other forms of surveillance. This is especially important because the majority of new HIV diagnoses in British Columbia are among ACB and migrant women. It is essential to understand how surveillance contributes to HIV stigma to identify points of intervention for policy and practice change. This study will examine how public health surveillance shapes ACB and migrant WLWH’s experiences in the healthcare system. To do so, I will collaboratively conduct a policy analysis as well as interviews and body-mapping with ACB and migrant WLWH.

Amanda Rowlands

How socio-structural inequities become embodied as health inequities: Examining pathways of gender inequities, inflammation and reproductive health outcomes among adolescent girls and young women

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is highly prevalent among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in South Africa. AGYW are also at higher risk of gender inequities. Stress, resulting from experiences of gender inequity, is associated with increased risk of vaginal tract infections. Chronic inflammation that results from persistent, over-activation of the immune system in response to stress is proposed to affect this relationship. Scant, community-informed research has investigated the causal pathways between gender inequities, chronic inflammation, and BV among AGYW. The overall aim of this proposed research program is to examine how chronic inflammation acts as a pathway through which gender inequities can lead to BV, using survey, clinical, and biological data from a study that includes 247 AGYW from South Africa. Using a community-engaged approach, young people with lived experience of gender inequities will be engaged at each stage of the research process. I will co-design with youth peer-researchers knowledge outputs to share back to community members and policy makers. This research program will contribute to understandings of how social experiences impact sexual and reproductive health outcomes.