Dr. Ashley Lacombe-Duncan received her MSW (2010) and PhD (2018) from the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on healthcare access and health equity, with a particular focus on healthcare access for people who experience multiple forms of intersecting oppressions. Specifically, her community-based interdisciplinary research agenda advances two overarching areas: (1) Sexual and reproductive healthcare access among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (trans), queer and other sexuality and gender diverse (LGBTQ+) people and women living with HIV, with a substantive focus on trans women living with HIV; and, (2) Social ecological, intersectionality and multi-level stigma theoretical approaches applied to understand and address LGBTQ+ and women living with HIV’s health in local and global contexts. Lacombe-Duncan’s work informs interventions to remove multi-level barriers and increase access to intersectionally affirming healthcare. Lacombe-Duncan has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Lacombe-Duncan is also core faculty of the U-M Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities, associate director of the School of Social Work [Sexuality | Relationships | Gender] (SRG) Research Collective and adjunct scientist at Women’s College Hospital, Toronto, Canada, where she co-leads the community-based Trans Women HIV Research Initiative. Her macro social work practice experience includes policy analysis, grant writing, practice-informed research, program development and program evaluation in community-based and hospital health and mental health settings.