CLU Professor Receives VCRA Community Service Award

(THOUSAND OAKS, CA – November 2006) – Adina Nack, Ph.D., a professor in the Sociology Department at California Lutheran University, has been chosen to receive the 2006 Community Service Award – Mark Vartanian AIDS Advocacy Award at the annual Ventura County Rainbow Alliance awards ceremony on Thursday, Dec. 7, at the Topa Tower Club in Oxnard.

Nack has been involved with HIV/AIDS education for the past 12 years as an outreach worker, health educator, researcher, and professor of sexuality studies. Her interest in Latino sexual health began in 1994 when she worked with Girls Incorporated of Orange County as a facilitator of sexual health programs at a Latino youth center in Santa Ana. In addition to winning national awards for her research on the stigma of sexually transmitted diseases, Nack served as one of the principal investigators for Ventura County's 2005-2006 study of Latino men living with HIV/AIDS. She is the co-principal investigator of Ventura County’s new study of Latina women and HIV/AIDS and also serves as a research consultant to AIDS Desk in Chennai, India.

A medical sociologist, Nack earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has been a member of Ventura County's HIV/AIDS Coalition since she moved to Thousand Oaks in 2003, and has been the organizer of Ventura County’s World AIDS Day events for the past three years.

For more information, please contact the Media Relations Office at (805) 493-3151.