SPH Faculty Member Awarded Peter Paul Professorship.
A version of this story first appeared on BU Today.
Photo by Cydney Scott
Angela Robertson Bazzi, a School of Public Health assistant professor of community health sciences, has received one of four Peter Paul Career Development Professorships, awarded annually to promising junior educators emerging as leaders in their fields.
The professorships provide a three-year, nonrenewable stipend to support scholarly or creative work, as well as pay a portion of recipients’ salaries.
Bazzi’s research focuses on groups such as sex workers and their partners and other populations with substance use problems that are often underrepresented in the scientific literature.
“We have great health promotion programs and interventions, but oftentimes there are segments of the population that are difficult to reach and don’t experience the benefits,” says Bazzi. “My work is interested in how social relationships and social marginalization impact health outcomes and access to public health services.”
She and colleagues published a study in August in the American Journal of Public Health that focuses on female sex workers and their noncommercial intimate male partners in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. “We found that emotions seem to play importantly in sex workers’ decisions to use condoms and other health services, so their emotional connections in their intimate relationships featured very prominently,” says Bazzi, who earned a bachelor’s at the University of Southern California, a master’s in public health at Johns Hopkins University, and a doctorate in global health at the University of California at San Diego.
Like the other Peter Paul Professors this year, Bazzi was surprised by the award. “This will open up really important opportunities and possibilities that maybe I had been thinking about,” she says, “but this helps me think about them more concretely.”
The other recipients were Sam Ling, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, Elizabeth Rouse, a Questrom School of Business assistant professor of organizational behavior, and Jennifer Talbot (CAS’04), a CAS assistant professor of biology. The professorships are made possible by a gift from BU trustee Peter Paul (Questrom’71) and are given to junior faculty across the University.
“Professors Bazzi, Ling, Rouse, and Talbot showcase the diversity, caliber, and depth of rising talent we have on faculty at Boston University,” says Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer. “From HIV prevention and the mechanics of ecosystems to the creative process and our understanding of the brain, all are making tangible, substantive impacts in their fields and brilliantly demonstrating the promise we saw in them when we welcomed them to our academic community. We are excited for what their futures hold, and pleased to support them as they pursue their research and scholarly careers here at BU.”