Plenary speakers at the STI&HIV 2021 World Congress
PL01 Jane Anderson (Professional workforce required as HIV epidemic moves toward eliminating transmission)
PL02 David Asch (Behavioral Economics examples for STI control)
PL03 Lindley Barbee (Partner management in the time of AMR; how to prevent transmission whilst using antibiotics responsibly)
PL04 Elizabeth Bukusi (Prioritizing non-HIV STI interventions in low resource settings)
PL05 Eric Chow (STIs in the time of COVID)
PL06 Joan Chow (In memoriam lecture for Julius Schachter)
PL07 Roel Coutinho (emerging and re-emerging STI)
PL08 Nicole Dukers (Dukers-Muijrers) (Clamydia control in women & men who have sex with men. Controversies and evidence on (extra-)genital testing & treatment)
PL09 Claudia Estcourt (Digital sexual health)
PL10 Yonatan Grad (The evolution of genomics in STIs – including GC, MG, and syphilis)
PL11 Bakita Kasadha (Reflecting on community leadership in research)
PL12 Ken (Kenneth) Mayer (The New Abnormal: STI and HIV Divergence and Convergence in a Changing Universe)
PL13 Bill (William) Miller (Effectiveness of interventions without RCTs)
PL14 Yogan Pillay (Implementation & monitoring national programs)
PL15 Sanjay Ram (Development of Immunotherapeutic approaches against GC)
PL16 Shruta Rawat (Strengthening communities’ response, stake, and engagement in HIV/STI research)
PL17 Justin Smith (Implementation Science – from theory to practice)
PL18 Ilan Meyer (Minority stress and LGBT health)
Jane Anderson
Professor Jane Anderson is a Consultant Physician in HIV Medicine at Homerton University Hospital and Barts Health NHS Trust. Her 35-year clinical and academic career in HIV medicine and sexual health has focused on underserved and marginalised populations and includes extensive cross disciplinary working between biomedical and social sciences, together with a track record of coproduction and partnership working with voluntary sector and community organisations. Jane is chair of The National AIDS Trust, the co-chair of the Public health England External Advisory Group on HIV and Sexual Health, co-chair of London’s Fast Track Cities HIV leadership group and a past Chair of the British HIV Association. She holds honorary academic appointments with Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry and UCL.
David Asch
David Asch is Executive Director of the Center for Health Care Innovation and the John Morgan Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
His research aims to improve how physicians and patients make medical choices in clinical, financial, and ethically charged settings, including the adoption of new pharmaceuticals or medical technologies, the purchase of insurance, and personal health behaviors. His work combines elements of economic analysis with psychological theory and marketing in the field now called behavioral economics.
Lindley Barbee
Dr. Barbee’s research centers on clinical and epidemiological aspects of the prevention and control of sexually transmitted diseases, with a particular focus on gonorrhea at the pharynx and rectum. Her current research explores the natural history of gonorrhea and chlamydia at the pharynx and the rectum, and new treatments for and the prevention of antimicrobial resistant gonorrhea. She also puts research into practice as the Medical Director at the Public Health – Seattle & King County STD Clinic.
Elizabeth Bukusi
Professor Elizabeth A. Bukusi (ObGyn), MPH, PhD, PGD (Research Ethics), Masters in Bioethics, FAAS, is a certified IRB Professional working at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and is a Research Professor at the University of Washington. She has substantial experience conducting socio-behavioral & biomedical research and providing HIV care, mentoring and training health care & research personnel to enhance capacity. She is the chairperson, National Bioethics Society of Kenya, board member of AVAC, Chairs the WHO HRP Alliance, is a trustee for the HIV Trust, and is an Elected Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (FAAS).
Roel Coutinho
After working as an MD in West-Africa, Coutinho specialized as medical microbiologist and in 1977 started at the Amsterdam Health Service (AHS). From 1989 till 2018 he was Professor in the epidemiology and control of infectious Diseases at the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. He is (co)-author of more than 600 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Since 2000 he is co-editor of the journal AIDS. From 2005 till September 2013 he was director of the Netherlands Center for Infectious Disease Control, he now works part-time at PharmAccess.
Eric Chow
Associate Professor Eric Chow is a sexual health epidemiologist at the Central Clinical School, Monash University, the Head of Health Data Management and Biostatistics Unit at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Alfred Health, and an honorary principal fellow at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne. He is the President of the Sexual Health Society of Victoria. His research focuses on male HPV vaccination programs and novel intervention for STI prevention and control (including using mouthwash for gonorrhoea prevention).
Joan Chow
Joan M. Chow MPH, DrPH is an Associate Editor of the Sexually Transmitted Diseases journal. As of 2019, she retired from the California Department of Public Health Sexually Transmitted Disease Control Branch and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Global Health as the chief of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, Assessment, and Evaluation section. Her educational background includes a BA from Yale College, MPH and DrPH from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a post-doctoral fellowship with the UCSF Department of Laboratory Medicine, Chlamydia Research Laboratory. Her public health practice focused on assessment of long term reproductive sequelae of chlamydia, evaluation and implementation of new diagnostics for population-based chlamydia screening, and development of innovative surveillance methods for monitoring chlamydia prevalence and incidence through private sector and commercial laboratory partnerships.
Nicole Dukers-Muijrers
Dr. Nicole HTM Dukers-Muijrers (1972) is infectious diseases epidemiologist, associate professor (STI/HIV, applied epidemiology, healthcare, prevention, social networks). Working at a public health service (South Limburg) and University (Maastricht), she bridges academia and society, addressing emerging societal themes. She has a track record in leading transdisciplinary and intersectoral programs, as the FemCure study (multicenter prospective cohort in women on chlamydia), Limburg4Zero (implementation initiative to move towards zero HIV infections), and the SaNAE-study (prospective cohort on social networks and health). Nicole co-authored over 140 publications (H-index 39), is editorial board member of scientific journals, and advisor in national infectious diseases programs.
Claudia Estcourt
Claudia Estcourt is Professor of Sexual Health & HIV at Glasgow Caledonian University, Honorary Professor at University College London and a consultant physician in Glasgow, UK. Her research addresses three major public health priorities: 1). Self-managed, digital healthcare, focussing on development and evaluation of complex online clinical care pathways within sexual health & HIV medicine, 2). Preventing transmission of STIs and reducing undiagnosed HIV by increasing effectiveness of partner notification strategies by developing tailored interventions for those at highest risk (lustrum.org.uk), 3) HIV PrEP public health programmes, implementation, clinical service development, evaluation and monitoring.
Yonatan Grad
Yonatan Grad, MD, PhD is the Melvin J. and Geraldine L. Glimcher Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. His lab uses interdisciplinary methods—including population genomics, mathematical modeling, and basic microbiology—to study pathogen evolution and spread, with goals of improving clinical and public health interventions.
Bakita Kasadha
Bakita Kasadha is a health researcher, writer and poet living with HIV. She is a Qualitative Researcher at the University of Oxford and holds a range of international advocacy positions. She is particularly interested in treatment access and quality of care for young people and women living with HIV.
Ken (Kenneth) Mayer
Kenneth Mayer trained in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital and in Infectious Diseases and Molecular Epidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. AS the founding Medical Research Director of Fenway Health, he created a community health research program that has developed an international reputation for its capability to conduct multidisciplinary research.. He is currently a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Professor in Global Health and Population at the Harvard TC Chan School of Public Health, and Attending Physician and Director of HIV Prevention Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. He has been a site Principal Investigator of NIH-funded HTVN, HPTN, MTN, ATN and STI CTG clinical trials units, focusing on bio-behavioral prevention research, and has been a member of the scientific leadership of HPTN and HVTN, and chairs the Science Committee of the ATN. He has co-authored more than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications, co-authored the first US guide about AIDS for the general public and has co-edited 5 academic texts. He has served on the national boards of amfAR, HIVMA, and GLMA, was a member of the CDC/HRSA HIV/AIDS Advisory Committee, and was a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the International AIDS Society, and serves on the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board.
Ilan Meyer
Ilan H. Meyer, Ph.D., is Distinguished Senior Scholar for Public Policy at the Williams Institute and Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University. In several highly cited papers, Dr. Meyer has developed a model of minority stress. The model has guided his and other investigators’ population research on LGBT health disparities.
Bill (William) Miller
William (Bill) Miller, MD, PhD, MPH is Senior Associate Dean for Research and Professor, Division of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health at The Ohio State University. Prof. Miller is an infectious diseases epidemiologist. His work has included observational and interventional studies focused on a variety of areas such as partner services, spatial epidemiology, sexual and social networks, improving surveillance data, and access to services. He currently leads studies in the U.S., Vietnam, and Malawi. He currently serves as editor-in-chief for the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases and associate editor for Epidemiology.
Yogan Pillay
Yogan was the Deputy Director-General for health programmes in the national Department of Health, South Africa (2008-2020). He is currently country director of CHAI-SA.
He has authored and co-authored more than 70 peer reviewed journal articles and two textbooks both with Birn and Holtz (The Textbook of International Health, 2009; The Textbook of Global Health, 2017).
He was awarded the Fulbright and Kellogg Scholarships for doctoral study in the US. In 2018 he was awarded the KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation Award for Eminence in Tuberculosis Control. In July 2020 he was named a Paul Harris Fellow by the Board of the Rotary Foundation.
Sanjay Ram
Sanjay Ram is a Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His group has a long-standing interest in elucidating how the pathogenic Neisseriae (Neisseria gonorrhoeae and N. meningitidis) interact with and escape killing by complement system, a key arm of innate immune defenses. This knowledge is now being used to design novel immunotherapeutics and vaccines against AMR N. gonorrhoeae. He also serves as an attending physician on the Infectious Diseases service and enjoys working with and teaching students, residents and fellows.
Shruta Rawat
Shruta has worked with LGBTQ+ communities–particularly MSM and transgender groups–on health- and advocacy -research for over a decade. Her research focus is HIV/STI outreach and prevention, and she advocates for community-led and -owned research. She has co-founded local support groups Umang for LBT+ and Yaariyan for LGBTQ+ youth.
Justin Smith
J.D. Smith, PhD is Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is an implementation science methodologist and clinical health psychologist. He is a Fellow of the Implementation Research Institute and on the training faculty of the NIH Training Institute in Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (TIDIRH) and two NIAID-funded programs for implementation research in the field of HIV. Prior to joining the University of Utah in Fall 2020, Dr. Smith was Associate Professor in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago where he served as Co-Director of the Program in Dissemination and Implementation Science and as Associate Director of the NIDA-funded Center for Prevention Implementation Methodology for Drug Abuse and HIV from 2015-2020. He has served on a number of expert panels for the National Institutes of Health on implementation science to reduce disparities and improve outcomes in HIV and cardiovascular health. Dr. Smith is Associate Editor of the journals Prevention Science and Families, Systems, & Health.
