AIDS Roundtable Participants Max Essex: A world leader in virology, Essex was one of the first scientists to suspect that a retrovirus was the agent causing AIDS. His research group identified gp120, a protein on the surface of HIV that provides the basis for diagnostic tests and epidemiologic monitoring as well as a vaccine target. Essex is the co-author of Saturday Is for Funerals, a portrayal of the AIDS epidemic in Botswana.
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hirty years after the first official reports about HIV/AIDS, we look back on the human devastation and forward to a changed social landscape. The infection has killed more people so far than has any other discrete epidemic, except for the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 and the Black Death of the Middle Ages. It has destroyed individuals, families, and societies. Yet HIV/AIDS has also raised public health to new levels of science, conscience, and innovation. Review editor Madeline Drexler asked distinguished Harvard School of Public Health faculty and alumni at the forefront of research
Harvey Fineberg: Dean of HSPH from 1984 through 1997, Fineberg is an eminent scholar in the fields of health policy and medical decision making. During his deanship at HSPH, he forged collaborations across the University and its teaching hospitals to address the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Phyllis Kanki: A virologist and expert in the pathogenesis and molecular epidemiology of HIV in Africa, Kanki has led AIDS research programs in Senegal for more than 20 years. She established and directed the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Since 2004, Kanki has led the Harvard President’s Emerging Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Richard Marlink: As executive director of the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative, Marlink has led the evaluation and coordination of AIDS research and training programs for developing nations, and has organized policy and educational programs to address the treatment needs of HIV/AIDS patients. Bisola Ojikutu: Ojikutu, MPH ’03, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, is a senior HIV/AIDS advisor with the John Snow Research and Training Institute. Her research interests center on disparities in health care access, both domestically and abroad, and she has advocated on behalf of underserved patients in resource-poor settings. Rochelle Walensky: Walensky, MPH ’01, is an infectious disease physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Since 1998, she has been a member of the Cost Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC) group at Massachusetts General Hospital.
/AIDS where the epidemic has taken us and where it is headed.
Chris de Bode/Panos
Spring | Summer 2011
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