Dr. Victoria Frye is a Professor of Social Work and Co-director of the Social Intervention Group. She is also a member of the Columbia University Global Health Research Center of Central Asia, an international and interdisciplinary team of faculty, students and service providers committed to advancing solutions to health and social issues in Central Asia through research, education, training, policy and dissemination.
Dr. Frye leads interdisciplinary research teams that design and test high-impact prevention interventions addressing two critical and intertwined health and social problems: intimate partner and sexual violence (IPV/SV) and HIV/AIDS. Additionally, she studies social factors related to blood donation and the role of social media in sexual and health behaviors. Her work has been funded by multiple institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Cross-trained in the social sciences and epidemiology, a hallmark of Dr. Frye’s approach is the development of complex, theory-based, explanatory models, assessed via social epidemiological and mixed methods studies using advanced statistical techniques such as multilevel modeling, multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and ecological momentary assessment. She then applies results in the design of multilevel and multicomponent prevention interventions, which she evaluates using experimental, quasi-experimental and implementation science study designs.
Dr. Frye has published extensively on the roles of social discrimination, intersectional stigma, and gendered factors in the distribution of adverse outcomes related to IPV/SV and HIV. She has mentored numerous violence and HIV prevention research scientists in the United States, France, and Kazakhstan. Her extensive portfolio of NIH-funded studies provides training opportunities for faculty and research workers on the science of violence and HIV prevention intervention design and evaluation.
Dr. Frye holds a BA, MPH, and DrPH from Columbia University. She has lived in Washington Heights, where her two children attended public schools, since 1999.