Keynote: Andrew Medina-Marino, PhD
Leveraging Community-based Platforms to Improve Access and Adherence to PrEP: The Community PrEP Study
Andrew Medina-Marino, PhD
Principal Investigator, Desmond Tutu HIV Centre
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Dr. Medina-Marino is a Principal Investigator with the Desmond Tutu Heath Foundation, an Associate Professor within University of Cape Town’s Desmond Tutu HIV Centre, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. His research focuses on improving men’s and adolescent’s health in the context of HIV and TB, and in finding ways to implement point-of-care tests to optimize individual’s health outcomes. In addition to his research portfolio, he directs an NIH D43 PhD training program in partnership with the University of California’s Global Health Institute. This D43 seeks to increase research capacity in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, which is where he founded the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation’s new research site in 2021. Prior to moving to South Africa in 2011, he was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the U.S. CDC. As an outbreak investigation specialist, he was twice deployed to Liberia during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak to work with Médecins Sans Frontières. He received his bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and his PhD in Molecular Neuroscience from the California Institute of Technology.
ESI Presentation: Alison Comfort, PhD
The role of health networks in disseminating knowledge about infant HIV testing in rural Uganda
Alison Comfort, PhD
Assistant Professor, University of California San Francisco
Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences
Dr. Comfort is an Assistant Professor at UCSF in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. She was trained as a health economist at Harvard University. Her research focuses on understanding individual and social network factors affecting health beliefs and behaviors, with a particular focus on reproductive, maternal and child health outcomes. She leads several studies both in Uganda and the United States examining how social network composition and structure affect health beliefs and decision-making. She is currently conducting research in Uganda among mothers living with HIV to understand how their social networks affect both knowledge of infant HIV testing and decisions to seek prompt infant HIV testing. She is also examining the role of social networks for contraceptive decision-making among reproductive-age women with a focus on understanding potential differences by serostatus. Building on qualitative research among pregnant women in Uganda, she is investigating how social support affects timing of antenatal care initiation. Ultimately, Dr. Comfort’s body of work aims to inform the design of social network-based interventions to support desired care-seeking, with a particular focus on low-resource settings.