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I am a board certified internal medicine and infectious diseases physician who has been caring for persons living with HIV since 2004. I care for a variety of persons living with and susceptible to HIV but have a special interest in the successful aging of persons living with HIV and implementing interventions that address social and structural disparities of health.

I am an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Divisions of Infectious Diseases & Global Public Health and Geriatrics & Gerontology and participate in clinical, translational and implementation science HIV research at the AntViral Research Center and through the Center For AIDS Research (CFAR). I also currently serve as the Co-Director of the CFAR Clinical Investigations Core, Co-Investigator for NA-ACCORD at UCSD, Vice-Chair of Underrepresented Populations Committee at the Advancing Clinical Trials Globally (ACTG), and Co-Chair of the HIV and Aging Working Group (ACTG). Through these roles, I foster the performance of clinical, translational and implementation science in HIV research by assisting with study design, study implementation, participant recruitment, the research regulatory processes, and data safety monitoring. Our CFAR CI Core also allows the generation of preliminary data and the performance of patient oriented research through our linked patient database and specimen repository.

Additional roles include Co-chair of the Leaders in Aging Scientific Interest Group (American Geriatrics Society), Co-representative for ID/GPH Wellness at UCSD and Co-representative for
JEDI efforts for the Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Care Division.

Currently, I employ a “bedside-to-bench” research approach. In other words, I pursue research questions that directly respond to the day-to-day needs of the people I care for. Examples of my current research interests include novel approaches to managing chronic pain in older adults living with HIV and the development of novel approaches to caring for older adults living with HIV with a focus on frailty, loneliness and stigma, implementation of a multimodal intervention for women experiencing the syndemics of HIV, substance use and violence.