Meet the Team
Megan Rowe
Mental Health Care & Community-Led Mental Health Crisis response
Salem Rao
Trans and non-binary sexuality and relationship research
Jenny Hui
BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+, HEALTH DISPARITIES & CLINICAL INTERVENTIONS
Marvelous Muchenje
HIV ADVOCACY, MENTAL HEALTH & WOMEN's RIGHTS
Nelson Pang
Child & Youth mental Health, Health Care Access
Sandra Kwan
HIV/STBBI Prevention, Harm Reduction, & Women's Health
Vincent Sarna
LGBTQIA+ POlicy and Community-Based Research
Heather House
Community Health and Harm Reduction Research
Megan Rowe (she/her)
Salem Rao
Master of Health, Aging, and Society Student
Salem Rao (he/him) is a Master of Health, Aging, and Society student at McMaster University and holds an Honours Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Toronto. His thesis connects sexual scripts theory to the lived experiences of transgender and nonbinary individuals in romantic and sexual relashionships, where he seeks to understand the social and sexual processes that occur when trans people are making decisions for their own pleasure, safety, and enjoyment in their relationships. His research interests include psychosocial and sexual development, the psychology of men, masculinity, and sexualities, and understanding just how our cultures and internal senses of selves inform the sexual decisions we make. In the Eaton Lab, Salem is a research assistant for Heterosexual Men Who Have Sex With Men project.
Jenny Hui (she/ her)
PhD Student, Counselling & Clinical Psychology
Jenny Hui (she/her) is pursuing her PhD in Counselling and Clinical Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her research focuses on resilience and mental health among BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, and how intersecting identities inform health disparities and clinical interventions. Her Master’s thesis explored the lived experiences of bisexual East Asian youth in Canada, and she has published two book chapters championing social justice in psychotherapy. Most recently, she served as a co-facilitator of group therapy for 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, and she co-authored a journal article on multimodal research with 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. Ultimately, Jenny’s scholarship and practice strive to uplift the stories of people and communities who are under-represented in counselling, psychology, and social work. In this lab, Jenny works on the HIV, Aging, and Cognition project.
Megan Rowe (she/her) is a PhD student in the Health program at Dalhousie University and serves as the Lab Manager for the Eaton Lab. In her role as Lab Manager, she oversees all the Eaton Lab’s research projects, coordinates research activities, and mentors team members. Megan is currently leading interviews for the Crisis Mental Health Response project.
Her research interests include systems transformation in mental healthcare, with a focus on evaluating systems and practices through critical social theories such as Critical Race Theory, Mad Studies, and abolitionist praxis. Presently, her research explores non-police, community-led mental health crisis response models, and how politicized, values-based approaches like abolitionist and transformative justice principles can be integrated to improve outcomes and reduce reliance on police in crisis response.
PhD Student, Mental Health
Marvelous Muchenje
BSW, MSc, RSW | PhD Student, Social Work
Marvelous Muchenje is a PhD student at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto and is the Community Relations Manager at ViiV Healthcare Canada. She has twenty-two (22) years’ experience working as a manager, project coordinator, and other administrative roles in the non-profit and NGO sector. Career history includes twelve (12) years of experience specializing in outreach to women and ethnic-cultural communities in Toronto. Marvelous is an outspoken HIV activist for the prevention, education and compassionate treatment of people living and affected by HIV. With her humour, she battles tirelessly for both public recognition and respect, giving thousands of women a voice in the fight against stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV. She believes in human potential and that if HIV-positive people are given the right nurturing and support they not only become good at what they are hired to do, but they can even achieve greatness, resulting in meaningful involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS.
Diagnosed with HIV in 1995, she continues to participate passionately in the HIV movement, being the voice of the voiceless, and advocating for the meaningful involvement of women living with HIV in issues that have an impact on their wellbeing. Marvelous’ research interests include mental health, social justice, human rights, women and HIV, sexual and reproductive rights, social policy, transnationalism, and globalization. She is also interested in developing community-based and participatory research approaches that are culturally responsive to the communities she works with. Marvelous works on the lab’s HIV, Aging, and Cognition project.
Nelson Pang
MSW, RSW | PhD Student, Social Work
Nelson Pang is a first-year PhD student at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. He previously completed a Master of Social Work at the University of Toronto, along with a Bachelor of Social Work and Bachelor of Arts in Social Development Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research interests include children and youth mental health, issues in access to health care, and social epidemiology. He am interested in researching evidence-based solutions to health issues through a social-determinants lens. In the lab, Nelson supports grant applications and conducts data analysis.
Sandra Kwan
Sandra Kwan is a Master of Public Health student at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She has recently completed placements with a local AIDS service organization and provincial agency, where she supported program implementation and designed health communication materials. Her research interests include HIV/STBBI prevention, gender-based barriers to care, and knowledge translation. She is interested in investigating determinants of risk behaviours, particularly in relation to HIV/STBBI acquisition and substance use.
As a future public health professional, Sandra seeks to translate research into practice and design evidence-informed interventions with people who use drugs, multiply marginalized women, and racialized communties.
Check out
our projects!
Master's Student, Public Health
Vincent Sarna
PhD Student, Social Work
Vincent Sarna (he/they) is a PhD student in Social Work at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research focuses on LGBTQIA+ participatory action research that results in the creation or updating of interventions, institutions, and policy for the LGBTQIA+ community. He has worked on many projects with a wide range of topics, including: LGBTQIA+ students' perspectives on mentoring, photovoice analysis from youth within a Chicago Public School cross-age mentoring program, and experiences of COVID-19 pandemic-related stress amongst LGBTQIA+ emerging adults. Currently, he works with the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, managing several Task Forces and creating corresponding reports. His task force reports have covered topics like firearm relinquishment within domestic violence cases, firearm prohibitors in Illinois, missing and murdered women and girls in Chicago, and the Illinois’ community-based corrections system.
Heather House
Health Care & Harm Reduction Advocate
Heather House is a dedicated advocate for health care and harm reduction, with involvement in the community since 2018. She has been actively engaged with non-profit organizations and has helped implement harm reduction groups to support people where they are. Drawing on her lived experience, she is passionate about STBBI prevention and treatment. In 2023, she was honored with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal for her service to the community. Her research contributions include the Three Infections, One Fight project.
