Daniel Halperin

Daniel Halperin, Ph.D., "joined the Harvard University Center for Population and Development Studies in October 2006. Until then Dr. Halperin served for two years as the Prevention and Behavior Change Technical Advisor for USAID's Southern Africa Regional HIV/AIDS Program (based out of Mbabane, Swaziland). Prior to that, he was the Senior HIV Prevention and Behavior Change Advisor at USAID in Washington DC. Dr. Halperin has conducted epidemiological and ethnographic research for over thirty years on a number of health and sociocultural issues in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. Since completing doctoral training in cultural/medical anthropology and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995, his work has mainly focused on the heterosexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, beginning with a three-year NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Berkeley's School of Public Health from 1995-8. Until joining USAID in August 2001, Dr. Halperin conducted research and managed HIV program activities as Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco's Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS). One of the main research questions driving Dr. Halperin's HIV-AIDS investigations has been, "Why does HIV prevalence continue to be so low in many developing regions having high rates of other sexually transmitted infections, as well as other ‘classic' behavioral risk factors for an AIDS epidemic, and meanwhile HIV has reached such terribly high levels in regions like southern Africa?" Most of his research and scientific publications (including in leading journals such as The Lancet, British Medical Journal, AIDS, etc.) have therefore dealt with some of the previously more neglected HIV co-factors, such as concurrent sexual partner networks, lack of male circumcision, "dry sex" practices, alcohol use, and heterosexual anal intercourse. He has conducted field research and consultations over the years in a number of countries, including Brazil, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, the Dominican Republic, Peru and in various inner-city US communities, and has an extensive background working with at-risk youth, particularly socially disadvantaged young men. He is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish, and conversant in some other languages, including Thai and Japanese."