Steffanie Strathdee // Cultivating an Idea in Global Health: The Links between Health, Service & Diplomacy

September 15, 2010 — Steffanie Strathdee shared insights from her two decades of work on HIV prevention among underserved, marginalized populations on the Mexico-U.S. border.

She is Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences, Harold Simon Professor and Chief of the Division of Global Public Health in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. This lecture was co-hosted by the USC Institute for Global Health, Keck School of Medicine of USC and the U.S.-Mexico Network @ USC.

Steffanie Strathdee

Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences,Harold Simon Professor & Chief of the Division of Global Public Health
Department of Medicine
School of Medicine
UCSD

Dr. Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist who has focused on marginalized populations in developed and developing countries, including injection drug users, men having sex with men, and sex workers. She is also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University. Her early awards for scholarship in HIV prevention include the Randall Coates Epidemiology Prize (1994) and the International AIDS Society’s Young Investigator’s Award in HIV Epidemiology (1998). In the last decade, she has published more than 350 peer-reviewed publications on HIV prevention and the natural history of HIV and related infections. Currently, Dr. Strathdee is engaged in research projects involving a number of HIV prevention projects in international settings, including Mexico, Brazil, India, Canada and Afghanistan. She also leads three NIH-funded studies of HIV risk behaviors among drug users and sex workers along the Mexico-U.S. border, which have identified mobility as a major determinant of HIV risk. Dr. Strathdee directs a Fogarty-funded Global Health Program grant and a binational USAID-funded cross-border training program on additions and social justice a partnership between academic institutions in San Diego and Tijuana. She also directs three training grants that focus on mentoring students, fellows and junior faculty on prevention of HIV and related infections among vulnerable populations, including migrants. In June 2009, Dr. Strathdee and her team were awarded the Leadership Award in International Collaboration from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.