Adina Nack Ph.D. has been researching and writing about health, gender, sexuality, and stigma since 1994: starting as an outreach educator for Girls, Inc. of Orange County, CA and continuing through her doctoral work at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Author of the book Damaged Goods? Women Living with Incurable STDs, Nack has also published articles and essays on topics including STD stigma, sex education, and HIV/AIDS. Her first feature magazine article was published in the Winter 2010 issue of Ms. Magazine, and her academic articles have been reprinted in over a dozen anthologies, and she has won awards for her research, teaching, activism, and public policy work.
As a medical sociologist, sex educator, and sexual health researcher, Nack has been seen and heard in MTV documentaries, CBS’s The Doctors, local and regional newspapers and magazines, and interviewed on a variety of radio programs, including NPR and FOX News Radio shows. She gives talks and workshops to a variety of audiences: e.g., college students, national academic associations, and national youth pastor conferences. Always focused on how academic research can inform real-life solutions to social problems, she addresses a range of topics – including how to have better sex in a world with STDs, the personal and public health implications of mixing morality with medicine, HPV vaccines, pop culture, and youth culture.
In the past, Nack has directed the University of Colorado’s Sexual Health Education Program, been a professor at the University of Maine, and served as a reviewer for top academic journals and the National Science Foundation. Currently she is a tenured Associate Professor of Sociology at California Lutheran University, where she was the founding Director of their Center for Equality and Justice and directed their Gender and Women's Studies program.
I respect that some of you are anti-vaccines–or just anti-Gardasil—but I hope that some Ms. readers will join me in cheering what I consider a better-late-than-never decision by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. It has officially recommended that boys and men ages 13-to-21 be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted disease HPV (human papillomavirus) [...]
This month, the FDA issued an advisory warning against the use of mesh implants that are routinely used for transvaginal surgical repairs of women’s pelvic floor damage. Tens of thousands of women opt for surgery each year to correct prolapses of the uterus and surrounding organs caused by damaged pelvic floors–which, to put it bluntly, [...]
Is President Obama’s emphasis on green jobs in his stimulus legislation–$55 million in funds directed toward developing green training programs–a 21st-century version of the New Deal? If yes, is it a gender-neutral New Deal? According to labor statistics, the answer is “no.” It turns out that a disproportionate number of “green” jobs are in fields [...]
I had the pleasure of conversing with Chris Bobel, Ph.D. about her new book, New Blood, which deftly tackles a taboo topic: feminism and menstruation. Ms./Adina Nack: You explore new feminist activism that focuses on menstruation. Historically, how have feminists viewed menstruation, and why is menstrual activism important now? Chris Bobel, Ph.D.: The issue of [...]
During the first National Women’s Health Week since the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) announced revised Pap test guidelines, many are wondering whether or not to have a Pap smear as part of our annual exams. Not enough questions have been asked about how the under-publicized (and under-scrutinized) new guidelines are impacting the health [...]
Coco Chanel has often been quoted as saying, “A women who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.” If perfume staves off doom, perhaps that’s what inspired this otherwise-inexplicable new ad by GlaxoSmithKline for its HPV vaccine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxXA6Y1xWt4 As you can see, it leads with a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, made-up–and apparently affluent–young woman lounging on an antique sofa [...]
On February 17, the pharmaceutical company Merck published research indicating new findings about its HPV vaccine, Gardasil. The studies show that it is effective against more than just cervical cancer and HPV diseases in girls and women ages 9 to 26, and against more than just genital warts in boys and men: it also prevents [...]
