Dr Catherine Dodds has extensive health inequalities research experience – focussing particularly on the impacts and the causes of disproportionate HIV distribution among men who have sex with men, trans people, people of Black African ancestry and migrants. This body of work has been a vehicle for better understanding the ways that social inequality, stigma and health intersect.  

Catherine’s policy analyses highlight how organisations, governments and international bodies shape health inequality through the different ways they construct complex concepts such as risk, stigma and harm. This has led her towards a newer stream of work, investigating the health and wellbeing needs of tattooists: a highly marginalised and precarious workforce that tends to be framed in current policy-making as a potential source of harm rather than ‘at-risk’.

Catherine is committed to working with practitioners and civil-society communities to co-produce tangible and functional resources connected to her research, such as:

• A training programme to reduce HIV stigma in healthcare settings
• A checklist supporting employers to update health and safety procedures relating to HIV and Hepatitis exposure
• Resources helping tattoo and piercing artists to be more inclusive and well informed around HIV and Hepatitis risk

Catherine supervises PhD students undertaking projects on issues related to the areas outlined above.