I am a HIV and viral hepatitis clinician and HIV clinical researcher. I joined the faculty of Wake Forest School of Medicine in July 2017 after spending 13 years at the NIH Clinical Center engaged in HIV care and clinical research. At the NIH, I served as principal investigator and co-investigator on clinical trials of HIV infection and antiretroviral therapy, hepatitis C and metabolic dysfunction-associated liver disease. My current research focuses on improving health outcomes for persons with HIV (PWH) receiving suppressive antiretroviral therapy and includes clinical trials looking at aging, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic disorder risk. I am principal investigator (PI) of a HRSA-sponsored Special Project of National Significance evaluating and characterizing frailty in aging persons with HIV. I am lead investigator on a related NIA supplemental award that seeks to correlate an electronic frailty index with adverse outcomes, phenotypic assessments of frailty, and exploratory biomarkers of aging PWH. I am co-PI with Scott Rhodes on a study looking at the association between social determinants of health and risk of metabolic disorders in PWH (R01 NR020307). I am co-I on a study with Christina Meade (PI) on a study assessing neuroimmune pathways linking HIV, depression and stimulant use (R01 DA061952).
I have experience in research leadership, currently serving as medical director for the Atrium Health Wake Forest Infectious Diseases Clinical Trial Center. Additionally, I have experience in quantitative and qualitative data collection, analysis and interpretation; recruitment and retention of PWH in urban, rural and marginalized communities; mobile health assessments and interventions; and public health policy development and dissemination of findings to a broad range of audiences including non-medical audiences as well as public health and scientific communities.
