Vivian Towe is a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Towe's work focuses on the impact of social factors on health outcomes among vulnerable populations. She leads numerous evaluation projects and projects focused on the development of measures. Her current projects include the multi-site evaluation of task-shifting mental health interventions to staff at community-based organizations for delivery to their clients. She also leads an evaluation of the integration of data systems and services at jurisdictions receiving Ryan White and Housing Opportunity for Persons With AIDS funding. Prior to coming to RAND, Towe was the lead researcher and evaluator of housing programs for PLWHA at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Before that, she worked on the design and implementation of the Centers for Disease Control's Baltimore site of the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System. That research measured social and psychological factors affecting sexual behaviors of heterosexual adults living and socializing in neighborhoods highly affected by HIV/AIDS and the epidemiology of highly prevalent and unrecognized infection among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Baltimore. In much of her work, Towe has designed structured questionnaires to assess sexual and behavioral risk factors among low-income and vulnerable persons at high risk for or infected with HIV/AIDS. She has used psychometric methods to develop and test scales, including confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling. Towe earned her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Selected Publications
Vivian L. Towe, Laura Leviton, Anita Chandra, Jennifer C. Sloan, Margaret Tait, and Tracy Orleans, "Cross-Sector Collaborations And Partnerships: Essential Ingredients To Help Shape Health And Well-Being," Health Affairs, 35(11), 2016
