Kimberly Koester, Ph.D.

Center for AIDS Prevention Studies/UCSF             
AIDS Policy Research Center                     
550 16th Street                     
San Francisco, CA  94105 

Phone: (415) 476-6303         
Fax: (415) 597-9125 
Email: kimberly.koester@ucsf.edu                                               
Web: http://profiles.ucsf.edu/kimberly.koester 

Kimberly Koester, PhD is trained as a cultural anthropologist and is an expert in qualitative research. She serves as the Director of Qualitative Research in the AIDS Policy Research Center at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on health promotion research and evaluation, with a specific focus on sexual health services research in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to having significant experience interviewing vulnerable populations e.g., gay and other men who have sex with men, injection drug users, sex workers, her work also includes policy-related research involving health care providers and key stakeholders in public health. As a qualitative researcher, she produces powerful explanatory models often based on the use of novel techniques which permit access to the nuance of participants’ everyday lives. These include case studies, the use of peer-ethnographers, serial interviewing and in-home interviews. Depending on the goals of the research, her analytic approach ranges from the fundamentals of content and narrative analyses to dyadic analysis. In 2014, she entered the Taos PhD program with the intention of integrating a social and relational construction perspective into her public health research practice. This has translated into bringing a c