Megan Threats, a doctoral candidate at the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), is one of 150 doctoral students in the U.S. and Canada selected to receive a $15,000 P.E.O. Scholar Award for the 2019-20 academic year. She was sponsored by Chapter CN of Chapel Hill, N.C.

The P.E.O. Scholar Awards were established in 1991 to provide substantial merit-based awards for women of the United States and Canada who are pursuing a doctoral-level degree at an accredited college or university. Recipients are chosen for their high level of academic achievement and their potential for having a positive impact on society.

Threats is a 2011 graduate of Michigan State University and a 2013 graduate of Syracuse University, where she was the recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholarship and the Master’s Prize of Excellence, among many other honors. She was a 2013 American Library Association Emerging Leader during her tenure as the Public Services and Reference Librarian at the AIDS Library of Philadelphia.

While pursuing her doctorate at SILS, she has been awarded the Clarivate Analytics/MLA Doctoral Fellowship and the Chancellor’s Doctoral Candidacy Award through the Graduate School’s Initiative for Minority Excellence. She was also accepted to the ASIS&T Doctoral Colloquium and was recently named an i3 PhD Teaching Fellow, along with SILS PhD student Kristen Bowen.

Threats’ research focuses on the effects of information behaviors on the adoption of HIV protective and risk reduction behaviors. She is examining 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. 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.

Founded in 1869 at Iowa Wesleyan College, Mount Pleasant, the P.E.O. Sisterhood is a philanthropic educational organization dedicated to supporting higher education for women. There are approximately 6,000 local chapters in the United States and Canada with nearly a quarter of a million active members

---

Related Research Areas: Equity and Inclusion, Health Informatics