Skip to main content Skip to navigation
College of Nursing

Biography

Dr. Sithokozile Maposa collaborates with community partners, people with lived experience, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and nurse-led teams to evaluate wrap-around program support impacts in reducing the impact of conditions such as HIV (stigma), substance use, and abuse or trauma to women's health. Using an equity lens to advance community-engaged research, she partners with researchers who value wholistic community wellness and youth mental wellness, including student retention and success among ethnic minority populations. Her lifetime goal aims to promote better health and quality of life and equity for marginalized populations.

Dr. Maposa’s vast practice experience centers on a strength-based approach that is grounded in Ubuntu ways of Knowing, Doing, and Being - an African cultural philosophy which builds on what exists to promote culturally responsive approaches to wholistic health care. Her practice experience in Zimbabwe involved integrating her psychiatric, midwifery, and community health nursing both in acute care (e.g., emergency department, pediatric units) and primary health care settings (e.g., integrating maternal child health, family planning - reproductive health, chronic conditions prevention (HIV) and management (TB), and adolescent health services including informing national family policy on youth and male involvement working with urban, rural, and remote hard to reach communities.)

Ubuntu principles of respect, reciprocity, humility, multidirectional mentoring, and humanity informs Dr. Maposa’s approach to teaching, scholarship, building relationships to nurture the work she is passionate about. She fosters learning-centered approaches by partnering with peers, students, and communities because she believes strengthening capacity is an essential ingredient for promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion of visible minorities. Moreover, when respectful relationships foster inclusivity of people with lived experience and visible minority voices, equity, and diversity with all key stakeholders, then capacity bridging can be realized.

Research Interests

  • HIV, substance use, and abuse or trauma prevention
  • Women’s and adolescent health and wellbeing
  • Evaluation of health systems, services, and intervention models
  • Health promotion
  • Youth mental health
  • Primary health care
  • Immigrant and (visible) minority health
  • Nursing practice in a global context
  • Black and Indigenous student success
  • Equity, inclusion, and diversity of visible minorities and marginalized populations

Methodology

  • Qualitative
  • Quantitative
  • Mixed methods
  • Community-engaged research, Two-eyed Seeing

Courses

  • NURS 201: Perspectives on Health Wellness and Diversity in a Global Context
  • NURS 204: Communication and Professional Relationships
  • NURS 205: Research for Evidence Informed Practice
  • NURS 304: Family Nursing
  • NURS 306: Exploring Chronicity and Aging
  • NURS 307: Integrating Mental Health and Addictions into Nursing
  • NURS 321: Therapeutic Interventions for Individuals and Groups/NEPS 327: Groups and Development
  • NURS 440: Interprofessional Perspectives Health Systems & Policy Development within a Global Context
  • NURS 450: Practice Integration
  • NURS 818: Statistical Methodology in Nursing Research
  • NURS 824: Advanced Integrative Exercise
  • NURS 990: Graduate Seminar
  • NURS 997: Doctoral Nursing Seminar

Publications

Grants

(PI) Penz, E., (Co-PIs) Froehlich Chow, A., Maposa, S., King, A., (Co-I) Patrick, J., Collins, c., Bandara, T. & Berthold, A. (March 2023 - February 2025). ‘Hope through Strength’: Applying an Adapted Social-Return on Investment Analysis to Explore and Communicate the Impacts of Sanctum 1.5, the First HIV Perinatal Care Home in Canada, 150000.00 (CAD). Impact Grant, Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation.
(NPI) Maposa, S., (Co-PIs) King, A., Froehlich Chow, A., Johnson-Jennings, M., Penz, E., (Co-Is) Gartner, K., Chelico, L. & Anderson, M. (April 2020 - March 2024). Sanctum 1.5's hope through strength: A novel, women-directed and community-based approach to wholistic care for mother-infant pairs experiencing a substance use disorder and/or HIV, 1231652.00 (CAD). Project Grant, Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
(PI) Luhanga, F.L., (Co-Is) Puplampu, V., Maposa, S., Oba, F & Bukola, S., Essen D., & Abudu, E. & Jeffries, K. C. Revealing Black undergraduate nursing students’ experiences in Saskatchewan programs. SSHRC Insight Grant application, October 2021 ($114, 376).
(PI) Racine, L., (Co-Is) Maposa, S., Vatanparast, H., & Andsoy, I (June 2018 - May 2019). Breast Cancer Barriers, Facilitators among Islamic/Muslim Immigrant and Refugee Women in Canada: A Mixed Methods Study., 3955.0 (USD). Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing, and the Canadian Nurses’ Foundation.
(PI) Maposa, S. & Racine, L. (May 2017 - July 2019). Factors Influencing Interpersonal Violence Among Women in Northern Saskatchewan, 7000.0 (CAD). President's SSHRC Research Fund - Insight Grant, Office of the Vice- President Research.
(PI) Rourke, S. B., … (Co-Is) Maposa, S., Maina, G., & Schwandt, M., … (April 2017 - June 2022). The CIHR CBR Collaborative 2.0: A program of Reach, 1500000 (CAD) Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
(PI) Rana, J., …. (Co-I) Maposa, S., (July 2018 - June 2019). Developing a Trauma- and Violence-informed Care Intervention for Women Living with HIV in Canada, 39990 (CAD) Catalyst Grant - HIV/AIDS (Community-Based Research) Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

External Committees

  • Editorial Board Member, World Medical & Health Policy Journal
  • Member, Pan-Canadian Association of Nurses of African Descent
  • Board Member, Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development (ICAD)
  • African Scholar Member, Community-based HIV Research – NewHITES Advisory Committee
  • Member, Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing’s Research and Scholarship Committee

Honours (Medals, Fellowships, Prizes)

  • Invited Participant, Consultative Meeting on HIV and Newcomer, Migrant and Refugee Health
  • Invited Participant, Provincial HIV Strategy review on Sharing the Wisdom workshop
  • Certificate of Award, co-authored abstract with highest score on Pathways to the Street and Risky Behaviors for the Girl Child in Cote d’Ivoire, 143rd APHA Annual Meeting
  • Doctoral Research Awards: Delta Lambda, Sigma Theta Tau Chapter, Population Reference Bureau (Population Policy Communications Fellowship), Saint Louis University (Novice Qualitative Researcher - Porter Scholarship Award, Graduate Research Assistantship Merit-based)
  • Scholarships: World Bank Affiliate Margaret McNamara Memorial Fund - Educational grants (PhD), W. K. Kellogg Foundation Fellowship (MSN -support at Case Western Reserve University, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing)