Lois Takahashi, professor and chair of the urban planning department and professor of Asian American studies, has been awarded a two-year, $430,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. Her project, “Examining the Geographies of Immigrant Sex Work: An Exploratory Study of HIV Risk,” will help provide a better understanding of “indoor venue-based sex work” in both New York City and Los Angeles.
The project aims to develop strategies for specifically targeting HIV risk-reduction to high-risk sex-work locales. Studies have shown that a significant percentage of female sex workers are Asian immigrants, who opt to provide services through indoor, or “off-street,” venues where detection and monitoring become less prevalent obstacles. The most popular venues of the kind include aromatherapy firms, massage parlors and tanning salons, many of which have proliferated in urban settings following increased arrests of street-based workers.
