Monthly Seminar Series

November CFAR Seminar: Ada Adimora, MD, MPH

Keynote Speaker

All Policy Is Health Policy

ADAORA A. ADIMORA, MD, MPH is a Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Her research focuses on the epidemiology of HIV and STDs among minority populations. She has led a variety of studies, including community-based studies, clinical research, secondary analyses of large databases, and a population-based case-control study of risk factors for heterosexual HIV transmission among African Americans. Her work has demonstrated the importance of sexual network patterns and critical contextual factors, such as poverty and racism in establishing and maintain racial inequities in rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in the United States.

She is Principal Investigator of the UNC site of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study-Women’s Interagency HIV Study Combined Cohort Study (MACS/WIHS CCS). In 2019 she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

IDWeek 2020 - Edward H. Kass Lecture from IDSA on Vimeo.

Early Stage Investigator Speaker Presentation

Magnifying vulnerabilities: Food insecurity and HIV outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic

Dr. Leddy completed her PhD at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Traineeships in AIDS Prevention Studies (TAPS) program at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UCSF. Her research seeks to understand the social and structural factors that contribute to HIV-related health disparities among women. She has conducted research in sub-Saharan Africa and the United States on the role of food insecurity and gender-based violence on HIV ​outcomes, and how empowerment approaches such as community mobilization might address these determinants. Her research is informed by social and behavioral theory and employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the complex dynamics that shape HIV ​outcomes. In this talk, she will highlight her research on food insecurity and HIV care and treatment ​outcomes among women living with and at risk for HIV in the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS).