Mary A. Young, M.D.

DC D-CFAR Clinical Core Director Dr. Mary Young's road to HIV research began in a very unlikely place. She received her B.A. in English and taught creative writing and American literature to high school students after college. Though Dr. Young had dreams of studying medicine while in college, it was not a path frequently chosen by women. Volunteering at a health clinic in Baltimore sparked her interest in medicine once more, and she decided to go back to school. After receiving further training at Boston University, she went on to receive her medical degree from West Virginia University in 1980. She was then matched to Georgetown University's Department of Internal Medicine for her internship and residency, and stayed on at Georgetown for her Infectious Disease Fellowship.

During her third year in medical school, an instructor suggested to students that they take a month to make themselves an expert in a narrow area. Dr. Young began reading records of gay men who presented with Kaposi's sarcoma. Following these reports came reports of men developing pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, and Dr. Young continued to follow these cases. By the time she relocated to Washington for her internship at Georgetown University, she had developed an interest in infectious diseases, specifically HIV. Working in Georgetown's HIV clinic, she noticed an increase in the number of women patients in what had previously been thought of as a disease that primarily affected gay men. As an attending, she applied for and received funding to start a women's HIV clinic. Later on, she responded to a request for applications that was issued by the National Institutes of Health with the intent of developing a cohort of women with HIV. Funding from this grant created the Washington Metropolitan Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS).

WIHS was funded in 1994 and the initial cohort contained about 400 women. Currently about 280 of these participants remain active, and there are 15 ongoing studies involving the cohort involving topics such as sexual beliefs and practices, HIV disclosure and depression. Dr. Young notes that a major difference between this study and others is that it does not exclude co-morbidities, so studies involving HIV and hepatitis, smoking and obesity are also conducted using the cohort. In her role as PI, Dr. Young makes an effort to invite established researchers who have made substantial strides in their own fields, to apply their research to HIV and specifically HIV in women. Dr. Young has discerned that women, who often serve as caregivers, will frequently neglect to care for themselves. Dr. Young therefore understands the importance of studying lifelong effects of HIV and treatment, such as the effect of long term treatment on the metabolism and how HIV behaves in pre-menopausal, menopausal and post-menopausal women.

Dr. Young sees the DC D-CFAR Clinical Core as an excellent resource for investigators that can help them to navigate the regulatory procedures that accompany clinical trials, support early stage investigators through grants, encourage established researchers to bring their expertise to HIV research and encourage bench researchers to extend their work to include the human population. Finally, Dr. Young firmly believes strongly that research participants are collaborators in the research process and that the Core should be involved in disseminating information obtained from research to the community as an acknowledgement of what their participation has helped to achieve.

Kim Blankenship, Ph.D.

Dr. Kim Blankenship has recently relocated to Washington DC, and is highly experienced in the field of HIV/AIDS research. As the newest member of the DC D-CFAR Executive Committee and the Chair of the Department of Sociology at American University, Dr. Blankenship will represent American University and bring her unique perspective as an NIH-funded HIV/AIDS investigator to the D-CFAR.

Dr. Blankenship began her academic career as a math major, but switched her major to sociology in her junior year because she felt her work would have more real world applications. But it wasn't until she participated in a National Institute of Mental Health pre-doctoral fellowship program in Comparative Studies in Immigration and Ethnicity at Duke University that Blankenship saw herself having a career in sociology. The fellowship gave her a new perspective and fostered her interest in historical and qualitative sociology. Greatly influenced by the experience, Blankenship went on to complete her Ph.D. at Duke. Her dissertation was on the development of US employment discrimination policy. From there Blankenship moved on to her first position at Yale University's Department of Sociology.

While at Yale, Dr. Blankenship's studies shifted from discrimination and gender in the workplace to reproductive rights issues. A regular attendee at and co-organizer of the Yale AIDS Colloquium Series, a colleague suggested to her that she begin research in HIV. Her first HIV-related project was a survey of community members' understanding of HIV and their risk behaviors. Later, Blankenship took part in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded project that sought to analyze structural interventions around drug use and to further understand HIV risk among drug users. In researching the determinants for disparities in HIV risk, Blankenship determined that "high rates of incarceration, particularly in the Black community...had to have some association."

As a researcher, Dr. Blankenship strives to balance the need for developing theory with the need for action and intervention. This often leaves her straddling the line between sociology and public health. Recurring themes of incarceration, sex work and racial disparities are prominent in her work.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of the Avahan: India AIDS Initiative, Dr Blankenship works on two different projects - one that studies the implementation and impact of community led structural interventions for female sex workers and their clients and a second that looks at the impact of HIV prevention interventions in India. Her domestic research is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and focuses on "examining how the movement between prison and community is impacting on HIV risk and whether it may be partially accounting for the race disparities in risk." An important part of this project is determining what impact drug policy has on HIV risk in the study population.

In 2010 Dr. Blankenship moved to Washington, DC to become the Chair of the Department of Sociology at American University. When asked to make the move to DC, Blankenship thought that she would be able to make a valuable contribution in a city where the rates of HIV/AIDS are so high. She sees the DC D-CFAR as a "community of scholars" that "expands the possibilities of developing...research projects" for all DC HIV investigators, and sees the potential for investigators to collaborate and form interest groups. She hopes to be able to develop projects that are relevant to the DC area, specifically those involving incarceration, community disruption, gentrification and residential mobility as they relate to HIV risk and prevention.

Anthony K. Wutoh, Ph.D., R.Ph.

The importance of mentoring is central to Dr. Anthony K. Wutoh. As Co-Director of the Developmental Core of the DC D-CFAR and Associate Dean of the Howard University School of Pharmacy, Dr. Wutoh emphasizes the importance of the D-CFAR in providing mentoring as a service to early stage and new investigators.

"Many of us have learned the hard way, but it makes the process a lot easier if there's a mentor who is willing to share with you their knowledge and expertise." Dr. Wutoh recalls one mentor in particular who made an impact on him as a junior faculty member. "He shared with me a number of things, invited me to participate in his research group [and] was willing to work with me in terms of development of grant applications." Born in Ghana, Wutoh's family moved to Maryland's eastern shore when he was still young. He cites family influences as a reason for his pursuit of pharmacy and for his subsequent academic career. His father, a professor at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, was involved in both plant genetic research and marine biology. "I remember him taking us to his labs and seeing his experiments and reading a lot of his different books." His interest in epidemiology and HIV research was sparked when he attended a seminar in graduate school given by a visiting lecturer. "She was talking about the impact of HIV on a particular population in terms of survival and in terms of… essentially wiping out a generation." Dr. Wutoh went on to do his dissertation on the differences in treatment time between black and white patients with CMV retinitis, an infection that afflicts immunocompromised patients, specifically those with HIV.

Today Dr. Wutoh's work concentrates on health disparities and his recent research interest has been in HIV prevention and treatment in older African Americans. "We've done a number of projects recently in terms of identifying risk behaviors among older African Americans and looking to see if there's an association between spirituality, risk behaviors with HIV and knowledge." Other areas of interest include exploring alternative therapies in HIV treatment and training and education of pharmacists to serve as primary health care resources in countries that lack the same health capacity as western countries. Dr. Wutoh currently serves as the Principal Investigator for the Howard University Center for Minority Health Services Research, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. When asked about the importance of the inclusion of minorities in health research, both as participants and as investigators, Wutoh says "I think their inclusion will go a long way in producing more nuanced research and better care and treatment options, helping us to address the epidemic in a more effective and comprehensive way."

In terms of his scientific vision for the DC D-CFAR, Wutoh puts emphasis on the necessity of developing a solid research network and developing "more basic scientists who are positioned to do translational research, so to not just look at the mechanisms of the disease but also to develop new drug candidates". Regarding the Developmental Core, Wutoh says he eventually wants to be able to provide a mentor for any investigator that requests one. In sum, Dr. Wutoh says "I hope that because of research we are conducting through the DC D-CFAR we will have a measurable impact on the epidemic in D.C., through better prevention, care and treatment and new scientific discoveries."

Maria Cecilia Zea, Ph.D.

Maria Cecilia Zea, Ph.D. knows that research is a culture in its own. In her new role as director of DC D-CFAR's Behavioral Science, Prevention, and Biostatistics Core, she will help translate the culture of HIV/AIDS research for aspiring investigators.

Learning about research is like learning a new culture, says Maria Cecilia Zea, Ph.D., director of GW's Latino Health Research Center (LHRC) and Professor of Psychology at The George Washington University. And she would know: as a Colombian immigrant and accomplished researcher, Zea has substantial experience learning about both.

"To conduct research, you have not only to distinguish what is important from what is not important, but also to learn to communicate in a different way," reasoned Zea, who is the director of DC D-CFAR's Behavioral Science, Prevention, and Biostatistics Core (BSPB), a position in which she will guide aspiring researchers through the world of HIV/AIDS research. "Decoding the research culture for the younger generations is important."

Zea was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, and moved to the United States in 1985 to pursue her Ph.D. in Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Maryland in College Park. Her research, which has been conducted in cities across the United States and in Colombia, focuses mainly on behavioral aspects of HIV/AIDS among Latino gay men, "in particular, structural and behavioral factors that lead to HIV infection," she explained.

For example, in her first project, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Zea studied disclosure of HIV status among Latino gay men. In the next, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Zea explored situational and personal individual characteristics associated with sexual risk among Latino men who have sex with men (MSM). Currently, she is the principal investigator of an NICHD-funded R01 to study HIV prevalence, sexual risk, and attitudes towards circumcision among Colombian MSM, and a co-investigator in an NICHD-funded project on HIV risk among Latino day laborers.

In her new role as the director of DC D-CFAR's BSPB core, Zea will oversee the recruitment and development of young researchers whose projects relate to HIV/AIDS behavior, prevention, and/or biostatistics. She hopes to encourage proposals that will address contextual and behavioral factors related to HIV transmission in Washington, D.C., ultimately helping to inform prevention efforts. "The risks for individuals in the District of Columbia include social networks with high prevalence rates of HIV as well as limited access to treatment," she said. More research is needed to explicate sexual risk behavior within this context. Above all, Zea, who currently derives great satisfaction from working with Psychology graduate students, is embracing the mentorship component of DC D-CFAR. "If you only develop your own career, you risk leaving behind a generation that could have carried research forward," she said. "I would especially like to see other women and people of color conducting this type of research because, as members of the community, they have valuable access to knowledge that can result in high quality research."