Professor Gruskin grows project efforts in Brazil

This month Professor Sofia Gruskin was invited to Brazil to work with colleagues in Sao Paolo on a range of topics, as well as to deliver two talks on health and human rights issues in very different venues. She served as a plenary speaker at the 9th Brazilian Congress of Epidemiology, and spoke on the importance of adopting human rights concepts and methods in epidemiological research and public health more generally. She was invited to address the public meeting to launch Project Muriela, a study on the health and well-being of transgender and transexual residents of Sao Paolo state. At the joint meeting hosted by the faculty of Medical Sciences of Santa Casa, the Centre for Reference and Training, STD/AIDS-SP, Nepaids and UNAIDS, her presentation focused on the ways in which a health and human rights framework can be of use to research with transgender populations, and discussed relevant proposed changes to the International Classification of Diseases. Professor Gruskin also spent time advising doctoral students and post-docs working in relevant areas, and worked with the Muriela project team on ensuring human rights concepts were adequately integrated into the questionnaire and other project components.