Karna Coulibaly, postdoc

Karna COULIBALY recounts his training and his work as a post-doctoral contract researcher in INED’s Mortality, Health, and Epidemiology research unit, which he joined in January 2024.

(Interview conducted in June 2024)

Could you tell us about your professional trajectory?

I first studied sociology and anthropology at university, then did a master’s degree in social sciences at Université Paris-Cité and another master’s in demography at the IDUP demography institute of Université Paris 1. I also did an internship at the Centre Population et Développement (CEPED), where I worked on the Makasi project, an interventional research project that aimed to empower sub-Saharan African immigrants living in precarious circumstances in Ile-de-France, specifically to improve their situation with regard to health and healthcare access, and so to reduce their exposure to the risk of contracting HIV. 

What led you to work on the subjects just cited?

I decided to work on the issue of HIV prevention after doing an internship in an advocacy association. I’d discovered some of the realities that HIV-infected—and affected—persons have to deal with, as well as the problems involved in infection prevention, notably in terms of unequal access to prevention assistance. So given my interest in research, I applied for an internship to work on an HIV prevention project involving socio-economically precarious immigrants. Following that internship I did my thesis on that issue. After getting my PhD I wanted to look into other chronic diseases to see what the situation is for them in terms of unequal access to treatment and prevention. That’s why I joined the SENOVIE project, where I work on the social and health trajectories of women with breast cancer.

What are your specific missions as a post-doctoral researcher at INED and what projects are you working on?

I arrived at INED in January 2024 to do post-doctoral research connected with the SENOVIE project run by INED researcher Anne Gosselin and Clémence Schantz of the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). The project studies the trajectories of French and sub-Saharan immigrant women with breast cancer. My particular work on this project is to help construct data collection tools and do data collection follow-up. I’d like to use those data for a detailed study of the characteristics of the women involved, to explore in what ways breast cancer and, where relevant, being an immigrant represent (or do not represent) a break in these women’s biographies, and to analyze the impact of the disease on sexuality. Also, building on my thesis, I continue to study unequal access to HIV prevention among sub-Saharan immigrants in France; specifically, inequalities related to knowledge and use of biomedical prevention methods, i.e., treatment-as-prevention (TasP), post-exposure treatment (TPE), and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). 

What are you planning to do after your post-doctoral research?

I’d like to continue working on unequal access to treatment and prevention, investigating as deeply as possible what the determinants are—and the interconnections between those determinants—at different moments in life and in different population groups. To this end I’m thinking of developing and proposing research projects with other researchers, and I plan to apply for more permanent positions.