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Brooks School Spotlight: William Lodge II, Assistant Professor of Public Policy

William Lodge II
January 23, 2025

Meet William Lodge II, Assistant Professor of Public Policy

Lodge is a behavioral and social scientist specializing in HIV primary and secondary prevention, with a particular focus on gender and sexual minority health both in the US and India. Professor Lodge is a Cornell NIH FIRST faculty member, a program funded by the National Institutes of Health to enhance and diversify faculty in the biological, biomedical, and health sciences. He joined the Brooks School in July.


Q: Like you, many students started at the Brooks School this year. Do you have any advice for them on how to make the most of their time at Cornell?

If you think about public policy as a jumping-off point for exploration into things that matter in the world, how things change, and things that you’re passionate about, you can use that as a vehicle for your passion.

Far more important than trying to figure out the best public policy degree to get you directly to Capitol Hill to be an intern working on legislation as quickly as possibleis learning to ask the questions that will lead you into those positions–the question of inequality within society, the question of power, the question of health and why it matters. The question of social justice and how we ensure it accurately is reflected in structural-level issues. If students are more interested in questions rather than the outcome, they’ll enjoy their time more.


Q: Can you talk more about your academic background?

In college, I studied English literature and postcolonial theory. Then, I went on to graduate school to study international education development. After that, I worked for four years in public health and really loved it, and then I got a PhD in behavioral and social health sciences. While the methods of the questions have changed, the questions that I asked in literature and postcolonial theory are similar to the questions I ask now in public health and policy.


Q: Do you have a favorite spot on campus yet?

Not on campusyetbut in Ithaca, my favorite spot is Triangle Park near the Gimme Coffee on Cayuga Street.


Q: What kinds of courses are you looking forward to teaching? 

My research is in global health, and this semester, I’m teaching PUBPOL 2050: Critical Perspectives in Global Health and Policy. I’m really excited about it because it provides a public health lens to policymaking in the global context. I love being an interdisciplinary researcher, so in this course, I incorporate intense classic theory and ask students critical questions like: How does that fit within the history of global health? What about the history of colonization? When we think of public health, who is the ‘public’ in public health?

Historically, global health initiatives were often designed to serve the interests of empires, prioritizing colonial objectives over the well-being of local populations. The course will guide students through the colonial darkness of global health, its current state, what it’s not, and what it aspires to achieve now. We’ll explore how we can reimagine global health to implement meaningful policy.

We’ll also focus on what a policy brief looks like, diving into the nuts and bolts of creating one. In our policy briefs, we’ll include an advocacy strategy—an attempt to get people on board—because the hardest part of policy and research is actually getting people to be convinced that it’s important. The course emphasizes the global south and guides students through the importance of theory, history, and then practice. 

I want students to leave the course feeling conflicted and learning to be comfortable with that struggle. It’s important to recognize that, at the end of the day, there is still so much work to be done because so many health disparities remain unresolved. I want them to carry that sense of conflict with them in the work they do, as it pushes them to reflect on their own privilege and continuously negotiate their positionality within their work rather than being blind to it. I believe global health inherently forces us to engage in this process of reflection, especially when operating within Western institutions.


Q: What do you like to do in your spare time?

I play the violin. I’ve been playing since I was seven. I’m not particularly good, but I enjoy it. I’ve kept at it because I realized I’d never be first chair, and that’s okay—it brings me joy!


Q: Could you tell us about your research interests and any research projects you have coming up?

My research focuses on HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) prevention and care among gender and sexual minorities, particularly in low-resource settings. I use the theory of syndemics, which examines how co-occurring disease epidemics interact within social constructs to impact health outcomes. For example, a person living with depression and anxiety in poverty might experience worse outcomes due to the interconnected effects of these factors. You can’t disentangle any relationships because it’s hard to know what’s more important and what’s not. If you fix the poverty, does that actually fix depression and anxiety? Syndemic thinking explores such complexities. 

I also apply an intersectionality framework to my researchanalyzing how people, power, and systems of oppression shape intersecting social positions that affect health outcomes. I look at the social and structural drivers that impact health outcomes, focusing on policy-level and structural-level factors that impact individual levels of decisions or behavior. 

One of the major projects I’m working on now focuses on transwomen living with HIV in India. Using a mixed methods approach —combining qualitative and quantitative research—I collect primary data to understand the barriers and supportive factors influencing why transwomen living with HIV may struggle to take their daily prescribed HIV medication. Applying an intersectionality and syndemic framework, I aim to capture the real-world complexities of non-adherence, whether it’s due to stigma, economic hardship, or systemic inequities. 

But I don’t stop at identifying barriers. My work goes further by designing interventions that address these complexities and exploring how community-driven solutions can create meaningful and lasting impacts at the individual, social, and policy levels.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.