Speakers
Wendy Armstrong, Roger Bedimo, Rachel Bender Ignacio, Barbara Cave, Demetre Daskalakis, Shireesha Dhanireddy, Ellen Eaton, Laura Fanucchi, Khalil Ghanem, Moises Huaman Joo, Hermione Hurley, Whitney Irie, Raphael Landovitz, Nicole Leedy, Jeffrey Lennox, Alexandra Oster, Joel Palefsky, Asa Radix, Jordan Resnick, Tina Rubenstein, Marice Ruiz Conejo Castillo, Zubair Siddiqui, Alice Thornton
Wendy Armstrong, MD, FIDSA, FACP
Associate Director, Division of Infectious Diseases
Vice Chair of Education and Integration
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, Georgia
Wendy Armstrong MD received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed her Internal Medicine residency, chief residency and Infectious Disease fellowship at the University of Michigan. She us currently a Professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, is the Associate Division Director of Infectious Disease, and the Executive Medical Director of the Ponce de Leon Center at Grady Health System which is a Ryan White funded clinic serving more than 6,000 persons living with HIV.
Roger Bedimo, MD, MS, FACP
Associate Professor, Internal Medicine
Chief, Infectious Disease Section
VA North Texas Health Care System
Dallas, Texas
Roger Bedimo, MD received his medical degree from the University of Yaounde, Cameroon and an MS in parasitology from Tulane University. He served his residency and was the chief resident for Internal Medicine at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Bedimo completed a fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and joined the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Division of General Medicine and Infectious Diseases. He served as ID Fellowship Program Director at UT Southwestern. He’s currently Chief of Infectious Diseases Section at the VA North Texas Health Care System. He is certified with the American Board of Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases. His research interests include the analysis of rates and determinants of non-infectious complications of HIV disease and viral hepatitis.
Rachel Bender Ignacio, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutch
Medical Director, COVID-19 Clinical Research Center, Fred Hutch
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Seattle, Washington
Dr. Rachel Bender Ignacio is a physician-scientist who specializes in the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases, focusing on HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. With a background in epidemiology and global health, she explores co-infections with herpesviruses or tuberculosis among people with or at risk for HIV. Dr. Bender Ignacio also studies the development of cancers in people living with HIV and develops protocols for clinical care of people with HIV-related malignancies. Her translational research on the immune system includes research on inflammation, immune-cell and antibody responses to viral infections, and susceptibility to HIV, as well as studies on the establishment of latency in early HIV infection. She also is engaged in the design and operation of studies on ways to treat COVID-19 in its early stages. Dr. Bender Ignacio is a member of the HOPE Group.
Barbara Cave, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC
Assistant Professor of Medicine
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky
Barbra Cave, Ph.D., APRN is an assistant professor and family nurse practitioner at the University of Louisville. She serves in the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute as co-Principal Investigator on the Co-Immunity Project, and as as the Hep C Program Lead for the UofL Health - UofL Hospital Hep C Center.
She is the principle investigator on multiple industry-sponsored grants and is working toward gaining NIH funding.
Dr. Cave earned her bachelor’s degrees in biology (2003) and nursing (2005) from Bellarmine University. She worked nearly five years in the Transplant ICU at UofL Health - Jewish Hospital before graduating with her Masters of Science in Nursing, Family Nurse Practitioner at Bellarmine University in 2010. In 2019, she graduated from the University of Louisville with her Ph.D. in Nursing. She received training specific to her roles in gastroenterology and hepatology through her work with medical faculty at the University of Louisville Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition.
She has co-authored several publications and delivered numerous podium presentations at local, state, and national conferences. She serves as a faculty presenter for the Chronic Liver Disease Foundation, Kentucky Hepatitis Academic Mentorship Program, Gastroenterology/Hepatology Advanced Practice Providers, and the Scripps Clinic Liver Research Consortium. She is a member of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease and serves on the Hepatology Associates. She is also a member of Sigma Theta Tau; the American Association of Nurse Practitioners; the Kentucky Coalition of Nurse Practitioners and Nurse Midwives; and a former member of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. She is a board member with the Kentucky Harm Reduction Coalition.
Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH
Director, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, Georgia
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis began his career as an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital in NYC where he spearheaded several public health programs focused on community HIV testing and prevention. He has since served in a number of capacities in both healthcare and public health in NYC. Most recently, he served as the Deputy Commissioner for the Division of Disease Control at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr. Daskalakis directed the public health laboratory and all infectious disease control programs for NYC, including HIV, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections, vaccine-preventable diseases, and general communicable diseases. In this role, he led one of the largest divisions in the Department, employing more than 1,100 staff, managing a budget of over $350 million, and operating 14 clinical facilities. In addition to his leadership in daily infectious disease control efforts, he has served as the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene incident commander during the measles outbreak of 2018-2019, as well as the current COVID-19 public health emergency since January 2020.
Dr. Daskalakis grew up in Arlington, Virginia. He received his medical education from the NYU School of Medicine and completed his residency training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He also completed clinical infectious disease fellowships at the Brigham and Women’s Massachusetts General Hospital combined program and received a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 scholarly articles and has received numerous awards for his scientific and public health contributions, including the Treatment Action Group Research in Action Award, the Latino Commission on AIDS Esperanza Award, the GMHC Hector Xtravagnza Xcellence Award, and the World AIDS Day awards from both New York City and New York State. He has also been recognized as a prominent voice for the LGBTQIA+ community by the New York Times, City and State, Out magazine, Metrosource, and Paper magazine.
Dr. Daskalakis is recognized nationally and internationally as an expert in HIV prevention and has focused much of his career on the treatment and prevention of HIV and other STIs as an activist physician with a focus on LGBTQIA+ communities. He has also dedicated much of his time to improving the health of underserved communities and is passionate about addressing health equity. When asked why he does what he does, Dr. Daskalakis responded, “I still get emotional talking about the early days of the AIDS epidemic not because I’m sad, but because I can’t believe how different the story is today. We have the tools at our hands to prevent infection and to keep people living with HIV healthy. Our barrier to achieving this vision is no longer science, it is systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.” He is deeply committed to addressing stigma in HIV by promoting “status neutral” service delivery and programming and by improving overall health and wellbeing of people with or at risk for HIV by addressing
key social determinants of health. He has also shown tremendous dedication to ensuring that biomedical prevention options, like PrEP, are accessible and affordable to all who can benefit from them and that the importance of viral suppression as prevention is recognized by public health, healthcare, and the community at-large.
Shireesha Dhanireddy, MD
Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy & Infectious Diseases
Medical Director, Infectious Disease Clinic, Harborview Medical Center
Medical Director, Madison Clinic, Harborview Medical Center
HIV Pathway Director, UW Internal Medicine Residency Program
HIV Expert Consultant, Northwest AIDS Education &Training Program Project ECHO
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
Shireesha Dhanireddy, MD received her medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine. She completed her residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine as well as fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. She is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and is board certified in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases, and Addiction Medicine.
Ellen Eaton, MD, MSPH
Associate Professor of Medicine
Division of Infectious Diseases
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama
Ellen Eaton, MD, MSPH is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). A native of Dothan, Alabama, she earned her BS in Chemistry at Vanderbilt University and attended medical school at UAB. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at Stanford Hospital and Clinics where she served as a Chief Internal Medicine Resident in 2011 before returning to UAB for her Infectious Diseases Fellowship.
Dr. Eaton’s patient care and research center on the infectious consequences of addiction. Her current research tests interventions to prevent and treat HIV in individuals with substance use. She is the Founder and Director of the UAB 1917 Clinic Opioid Treatment Clinic. She served numerous public health roles in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic including the Branch Director for Special Populations on the Jefferson County Department of Public Health COVID Incident Command and Infectious Diseases consultant to the Mayor of Birmingham as part of his COVID response, #BHMStrong.
Laura Fanucchi, MD, MPH
Associate Professor, Medicine
Division of Infectious Diseases
Center on Drug and Alcohol Research
University of Kentucky
Director, UK Addiction Consult and Education Services
Lexington, Kentucky
Dr. Laura Fanucchi is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research at the University of Kentucky. She received her MD and MPH from Emory University, and completed an Internal Medicine residency and Chief Residency at New York-Presbyterian Hospital / Weill Cornell. She is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine and is Director of the UK Addiction Consult and Education Service. She also provides treatment for opioid use disorder in the UK Bluegrass Care Clinic and in the UK First Bridge Clinic. Dr. Fanucchi's research focus is in integrating evidence-based treatment of opioid use disorder in medically complex patient populations. She has presented regionally and nationally on the management of hospitalized patients with opioid use disorder, and provides training to physicians and other members of the healthcare team.
Khalil Ghanem, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Medicine, Infectious Diseases
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Program Director of the Graduate Training Programs in Clinical Investigation
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Baltimore, Maryland
Khalil Ghanem is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the Program Director of the Graduate Training Programs in Clinical Investigation at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has been the Principal Investigator of the CDC-funded Johns Hopkins STD/HIV Prevention Training Center since 2014. His research focuses on reproductive tract infections- in particular syphilis and the vaginal microbiome. He is the current president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association.
Moises Huaman Joo, MD, MSc
Associate Professor, Medicine/Infectious Disease/Internal Medicine
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Cincinnati, Ohio
Moises A. Huaman, MD MSc is a physician trained in infectious diseases, immunology, and clinical epidemiology. He is Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati and serves as Medical Director for the Hamilton County Tuberculosis Control Program in Ohio. Dr. Huaman has experience conducting tuberculosis and HIV studies locally and internationally. His research focuses on the interplay between tuberculosis, HIV, and cardio-metabolic diseases. He is a former Scholar of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Minority HIV Investigator Mentoring Program and CTSA KL2 Program. He currently serves as co-Principal Investigator for the University of Cincinnati Clinical Research Site.
Hermione Hurley, MBChB, BE
Infectious Disease, Addiction Medicine Physician
Denver Health and Hospital Authority, Denver, Colorado
Assistant Professor of Medicine
University of Colorado, Aurora, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
Hermione Hurley is an Assistant Professor at University of Colorado, working as an Infectious Disease and Addiction Medicine physician at Denver Health. Her interest in combining care for ID and substance was prompted by observing poor health outcomes for people after release from incarceration back into the community. Her position is supported by both Psychiatry and Medicine enabling her to treat ID in methadone clinics, and provide medical care for substance use in the ID clinic for people living with HIV.
Whitney Irie, PhD, MSW
Lecturer in Population Medicine
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
Boston, Massachusetts
Whitney Irie, PhD, MSW is a lecturer on Population Medicine in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. Her primary research focuses on preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) access and implementation, particularly for Black Women in the United States. Dr. Irie utilizes a community-empowerment and practice-guided framework to identify mechanisms and processes at the structural, interpersonal, and individual levels to improve, promote, and protect the sexual health of Black women, with a specific focus on Black women in the Midwest, South, and rural areas. Her research situates health disparities as a consequence of social and structural practices driven by systems of oppression rather than individual behavior. Her current projects use both in depth qualitative data and large data sets to understand patterns and preferences of PrEP access, and implementation science to develop interventions to facilitate improved competency and capacity for HIV prevention and PrEP care provision in clinical settings that serve Black women.
Dr. Irie was a NIH-funded post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School, prior to she received her doctoral degree in social work from the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and completed a master’s degree in social work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Raphael Landovitz, MD, MSc
Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Center Co-Director | Core Co-Director, Combination Prevention Core
UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research & Education
Los Angeles, California
Dr. Landovitz received his BA in Chemistry from Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey, USA), and received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School (Boston, Massachusetts, USA). Following this, he completed an internship, residency, and served as Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) and an Infectious Diseases fellowship with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts, USA). He then served as Medical Co-Director of the Vietnam-CDC-Harvard Medical School-AIDS-Partnership (VCHAP), helping to train Vietnamese physicians in HIV care and treatment. He is an infectious disease and HIV clinician and clinical investigator whose research interests include HIV prevention (including pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis and other combination prevention strategies) and the impact of such prevention interventions on risk behavior. Dr. Landovitz works with the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Division of AIDS (DAIDS) clinical trials networks for HIV therapeutics and HIV Prevention, and the network for COVID19 Prevention. He is has led numerous clinical trials, and currently leads the NIH trials developing long-acting injectable cabotegravir for HIV prevention. In 2010, he was awarded the John Carey Young Investigator Award by the AIDS Clinical Trials Group in 2010, and the American Association of HIV Medicine Research Award in 2017. Dr. Landovitz is the Co-director of the UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research & Education (CARE) and of the UCLA Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services (CHIPTS). During the COVID19 Pandemic, he has locally led COVID treatment and prevention clinical trials, and is the local principal investigator for the Astra Zeneca COVID 19 vaccine study, and he continues that work as a partner with Dr. Arleen Brown’s STOP COVID-19 CA initiative.
Nicole Leedy, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Infectious Disease Fellowship Program Director
Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Dr. Leedy completed a combined residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics followed by a fellowship in Adult Infectious Diseases at the University of Kentucky. She is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Kentucky where she serves as the Program Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship, and director of the KY AETC Interprofessional Education Program as well as clinical staff. She currently is an investigator/co-investigator for her institution’s Ryan White Program as well as a lecturer for the KY AIDS Education and Training Center. Her clinical interests include HIV and STDs, and injection drug use related infections with a special interest in adolescent populations.
Jeffrey Lennox, MD, FIDSA
Chief & Medical Director of Infectious Diseases, Grady Memorial Hospital
Vice Chair of Medicine, Ponce de Leon Center
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, Georgia
Dr. Lennox is chief of infectious disease, Grady Memorial Hospital; vice-chair of medicine for Grady affairs; and medical director of the infectious disease program at the Ponce de Leon Center. His area of specialty HIV/AIDS. As the Principal Investigator of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Network’s Emory HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Unit in Atlanta, he researches safer, more effective treatment options for people living with HIV. He is the medical director of the infectious disease program at the Ponce de Leon Center, which provides patients with a wide spectrum of services in one location, including primary care clinics, a clinical research area, subspecialty clinics, HIV education and community referral. Through Dr. Lennox's leadership, the infectious disease program at the Ponce Center has gained national recognition as one of the premier sites for HIV care in the United States. Grady has the largest population of HIV-infected patients in the United States. Dr. Lennox is also the Director of Quality & Efficiency and Trial Innovation Centers in the GA CTSA.
Alexandra Oster, MD
Acting Chief of the Detection and Response Branch
Division of HIV Prevention
Center's for Disease Control
Atlanta, Georgia
Alexa Oster leads CDC’s efforts to detect and respond to HIV clusters and outbreaks. She is currently the Acting Chief of the Detection and Response Branch in CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention. Dr. Oster graduated from Vanderbilt University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed her residency in Primary Care Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital. She joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer in 2007.
Joel Palefsky, MD, CM, FRCP(C)
Professor, Medicine
University of California San Francisco School of Medicine
San Francisco, California
Joel Palefsky, M.D., C.M., F.R.C.P.(C). Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. He is a graduate of McGill University School of Medicine, Montreal, Canada and trained there in Internal Medicine. His post-doctoral fellowship was at Stanford University where he trained in Infectious Diseases at Stanford University and molecular virology. He joined the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco in 1989, where he remains to the present time.
He is an internationally recognized expert on the molecular biology, treatment, pathogenesis and natural history of anogenital human papillomavirus infections, particularly in the setting of HIV infection. He is the director of the world's first clinic devoted to prevention of anal cancer, the Anal Neoplasia Clinic Research and Education Center at the UCSF Cancer Center. He is the vice-chair of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-supported AIDS Malignancy Consortium. He is the chair of the Anal Cancer /HSIL Outcomes Research (ANCHOR) Study, a national multi-site NIH study designed to determine whether treatment of anal cancer precursor lesions prevents the development of anal cancer and to identify biomarkers of progression. He is founder and past president of the International Anal Neoplasia Society and is past president of the International Papillomavirus Society. He is the founder and chairperson of the IPVS International HPV Awareness Day Campaign.
Asa Radix, MD, PhD
Senior Director of Research and Education
Callen-Lorde Community Health Center
New York, New York
Dr. Radix is an infectious disease/HIV specialist at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in NYC and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology. Dr. Radix is a recognized expert in transgender medicine and has contributed to multiple national and international guidelines for the care of transgender and gender diverse people. Dr. Radix serves on several boards including the New York State AIDS Institute Medical Care Criteria Committee, the Pan American Health Organization HIV/STI Technical Advisory Committee, the American Sexual Health Association (Chair) and the HHS Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents, and is currently co-chair of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care 8 working group. Dr. Radix's research focuses on STI/HIV risk, HIV prevention and health outcomes in transgender populations, including the first community-based cohort study of trans people in the USA.
Jordan Resnick, MD MPH
Infectious Diseases Fellow
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Jordan A Resnick MD MPH received his Master of Public Health Degree and Medical Degree from St Georges University Grenada West Indies He completed his internal medicine residency at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston New Jersey Dr Resnick is currently a first year Infectious Diseases Fellow at the University of Kentucky in Lexington He is certified with the American Board of Internal Medicine
Tina Rubenstein, MSW, JD
Grant Manager
Kentucky Primary Care Association
Frankfort, Kentucky
Tina Rubenstein earned her law degree from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and her graduate degree in social work from New York University. She has provided training on a wide range of topics including domestic violence, human trafficking, child welfare, and conflict resolution, and taught the Violence Against Women and Children course at Rutgers University Graduate School of Social Work in New Jersey.
Marice Ruiz Conejo Castillo, MD
Infectious Diseases Fellow
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Marice Ruiz, MD received her medical degree from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru. She completed Internal Medicine residency at Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, Florida. Dr. Ruiz is an Infectious diseases fellow at University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. She is certified with the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Zubair Siddiqui, MD
Infectious Diseases Fellow
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Zubair H Siddiqui MBBS received his medical degree from Osmania Medical College, Hyderabad, India. He served his residency in Internal Medicine at the Wayne state university, Detroit Medical Center. Dr. Siddiqui is currently a first year Fellow of Infectious Diseases at University of Kentucky. He is certified with the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Alice Thornton, MD
Professor of Medicine
University of Kentucky
College of Medicine
Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases
University of Kentucky Medical Center
Lexington, Kentucky
Dr. Thornton completed her medical degree at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.
She completed her residency at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Internal Medicine. She then completed her fellowship training with the Division of Infectious Diseases at Indiana University Purdue University (IUPUI) where she studied the pathogenesis of chancroid. She was recruited to assist in the development of an Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program at the University of Kentucky in 1998.
Dr. Thornton has successfully acquired four HRSA funded grants – Ryan White Part B, C and D and the Local Performance Site grant of the Southeast AIDS Training and Education Center. She is the Bluegrass Care Clinic site PI for the NIH-funded REPRIEVE Study – Randomized Clinical Trial to Prevent Vascular Events in HIV.
Dr. Thornton is a clinical site visitor for Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and also serves as a grant reviewer for HRSA, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Thornton is on the Ryan White Medical Providers Coalition Steering Committee, and has served on the HIVMA Board of Directors. She is a Professor of Medicine in the University of Kentucky Department of Internal Medicine and Chief of the UK Division of Infectious Diseases.