Megan Threats, a doctoral student at the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), has received the 2018 Clarivate Analytics/MLA Doctoral Fellowship from the Medical Library Association (MLA). Previously known as the Thomson Reuters/MLA Doctoral Fellowship, the award supports research or travel for doctoral work in an area of health sciences librarianship or information sciences.
Threats is the second SILS PhD student in a row to have earned the fellowship, which is awarded biennially in even numbered years. Recent SILS doctoral graduate Emily Vardell (PhD ’17) received the 2016 fellowship. Other past recipients include National Library of Medicine Associate Director Valerie Florance and SILS Distinguished Research Professor Joanne Gard Marshall.
In her third year as a PhD student at SILS, Threats’ research focuses on the effects of information behaviors on the adoption of HIV protective and risk reduction behaviors. Threats says the motivation for her research is to “examine the impact that information and the rapid expansion of new technologies have on the utilization of HIV prevention, treatment, and care services among high risk populations.”
Threats, who was a 2013 American Library Association Emerging Leader during her tenure as the Public Services and Reference Librarian at the AIDS Library of Philadelphia, hopes that her research will aid in efforts to close the gap between information utilization and health behavior adoption. In the future, she hopes to design technology-based HIV prevention and treatment interventions, and improve the user experience of consumer health websites and applications.
