A medical doctor with graduate training in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology and Public Health, from Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, USA. Joan has also completed a one year Fellowship in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Research from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, Seattle. She has more than 10 years’ experience in biomedical research involving chronic diseases, HIV and viral hepatitis. She was a Uganda Co-Investigator on a multi-site population-based, study on chronic non-communicable diseases in four sub-Saharan African countries (Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa), which assessed prevalence and risk factors of NCDs and the feasibility of establishing long term, prospective cohorts to study etiology, risk factors socio-cultural issues related to chronic NCDs among indigenous Africans. Joan has been a scholar on a research program of HIV and hepatocellular carcinoma in Uganda. Her work has focused on viral hepatitis B among HIV infected and uninfected pregnant women in Uganda, with funding from NIH under the U54 Program on SSA collaborative HIV and cancer consortia. Joan is currently a co-Investigator on two viral hepatitis studies; [1] A study to determine hepatitis C prevalence, HIV co-infection and related factors among blood donors in Uganda; [2] A study to evaluate feasibility and cost-effectiveness of HIV and viral hepatitis B care integration within public health care facilities in Uganda. She is also currently a Co-investigator on the NIH U-54 SSA grant on HIV- associated malignancies in sub-Saharan Africa. She has served as member of the Safety Review Board of several international clinical studies of HIV vaccines conducted by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Joan plans to strengthen and further her work on HIV and viral hepatitis, including prevention of mother-to-child hepatitis B transmission, and using implementation science methods to integrate hepatitis care with routine HIV care. Joan intends to mentor young upcoming scientists in these fields and in population health.
