Dr. Melissa Wallace

Dr Melissa Wallace (B.Soc.Sci, Hons, MSc, PhD) is a health psychologist and behavioural science researcher. She is the Adolescent Socio-Behavioural Project Lead at Desmond Tutu Health Foundation and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the School of Public Health at the University of Cape Town. She completed her PhD research with adolescents with chronic conditions, and her research work has predominantly been in behavioural science in HIV, primarily with adolescents. She has experience working on the socio-behavioural aspects of biomedical HIV prevention to understand product acceptability, uptake and adherence in adolescents and other communities. In addition, she has considerable experience implementing qualitative research covering diverse topics on health-related cognitions, emotions and behaviour. She has managed several large projects, including an EDCTP-funded project to build capacity in multiple sites for adolescent HIV vaccine trials; and an NIH-funded MP3 project to examine adolescent preferences for biomedical HIV prevention strategies.