About searcHIV

About searcHIV

Chinese translation.

One of the defining qualities of living with HIV has been that it is incurable, and this tenet has powerfully formed and disrupted individual, organizational, and institutional identities. But recent medical advances have contested this basic fact, and now HIV cure research, once unimaginable, is at the center of public and scientific attention. On both clinical and public health grounds, the identification of an effective HIV cure would be a great achievement. At the same time, curing HIV is best conceived not simply as an absolute medical victory, but also as a social intervention whose meaning and effects are complex and uncertain.

The goal of this working group is to investigate these complexities and uncertainties, drawing on the input and expertise of a diverse group of global HIV stakeholders. Throughout our project, we aim to develop a theoretical framework about HIV cure research and early implementation using historical, conceptual and ethical data; determine HIV cure stakeholder perspectives on cure research and early implementation; and develop an online forum to promote stakeholder engagement focusing on the social and ethical implications of HIV cure research.

Our three research sites—located in Cape Town, South Africa; Chapel Hill, USA;  and Guangzhou, China—give us an opportunity for powerful cross-cultural comparisons, which will help us us identify intersecting themes about unintended implications of HIV cure. This work will provide a strong foundation for subsequent HIV cure research and early implementation around the world.

Team Member Profiles

Samantha Farley

Health Policy and Management Major University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill searcHIV/2BeatHIV Intern Class of 2019   salouise@live.unc.edu

Kimberly Knight

Kimberly M. Knight is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina. Currently, she’s pursuing her Master’s Degree in Public Health at Liberty University. She earned Bachelor’s Degrees from North Carolina Central University in Family & Consumer Sciences concentrating Family & Community … Read more

Kali Zhou

Kali Zhou is a recent graduate of the internal medicine residency program at the University of California, Los Angeles. She completed her medical school training at Northwestern University. Her clinical interest is in viral hepatitis and she has previously completed … Read more

Jintanat Ananworanich

Dr. Jintanat Ananworanich serves as the Associate Director for Therapeutics Research at MHRP. In this role, Dr. Ananworanich oversees adult HIV therapeutic trials as part of the NIH-funded MHRP Clinical Trials Unit under the AIDS Clinical Trials Group. While she … Read more

David Bangsberg

Dr. Bangsberg’s research focuses on HIV in impoverished populations. In 1996, he launched a series of studies in HIV+ homeless and marginally housed individuals in response to concerns that poor adherence to HIV antiretroviral treatment in the urban poor would … Read more

Wei-Ping Cai

Wei-Ping Cai, MD Weiping Cai. MD. Director of Infectious Diseases Department, affiliated Guangzhou Eighth People’s Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University. He presided on the Mega study examining clinical outcomes and genetics of HIV-HCV co-infection.

Ben Cheng

Managing Director Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation May 2012 – Present (4 years 6 months) Director, Advocacy and Communications PATH September 2008 – May 2011 (2 years 9 months) Deputy Director Forum for Collaborative HIV Research, The George Washington University 2002 … Read more

Carissa Chu

Carissa Chu is a 4th year medical student at UCSF. She completed her Doris Duke-funded clinical research project in Guangzhou, China, during 2013-2014 focused on the social science of an HIV cure as well as access to HCV treatment for … Read more

Donaldson Conserve

Postdoctoral Research Fellow University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC USA dxg341@gmail.com Recent Publications: 3198.0 Addressing the Impact of the Ebola Virus Disease- related Stigma among African Immigrants in the United States 3266.0 Ebola outbreak: Assessing the Democratic Republic of … Read more

Johanna Crane

Dr. Crane’s book Scrambling for Africa: AIDS, Expertise, and the Rise of American Global Health Science (Cornell University Press, 2013) uses fieldwork conducted in the U.S. and Uganda to track how Africa has moved from being largely excluded from advancements … Read more

Amanda Crooks

Amanda Crooks is a clinical research associate at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a B.S. degree in biology and has worked with the HIV Cure Program under … Read more

Kevin Fenton

Kevin Fenton joined Public Health England (PHE) on 12 November 2012. Career highlights: previously held executive positions at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Protection Agency over 20 years’ experience in public health medicine, infectious … Read more

Adam Gilbertson

Adam is a Research Associate of Oxford’s School of Anthropology and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. At UNC, he is based in the Institute for Global … Read more

Gail Henderson

Gail E. Henderson, PhD, is professor of Social Medicine in the School of Medicine and adjunct professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She was Chair of Social Medicine from 2009 to 2015. Her teaching … Read more

Lisa Hightow-Weidman

lisa_hightow@med.unc.edu Division of Infectious Diseases CB# 7030, Bioinformatics Building 130 Mason Farm Road, 2nd Floor Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7030   Education M.D., University of Virginia, 1998 M.P.H., University of North Carolina, 2003 Research Summary Dr. Hightow-Weidman’s research interests include … Read more

Eric Juengst

Eric Juengst is Director of the UNC Center for Bioethics and Professor in the Department of Social Medicine and the Department of Genetics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He received his B.S. in Biology from the University … Read more

Ying-Ru Lo

Team Leader, HIV, Hepatitis and STI World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific Manila, Philippines loy@wpro.who.int Dr. Ying-Ru Lo serves as the Team Leader of the HIV, Hepatitis & STI Unit within the Division of Communicable Disease Control … Read more

Meredith Blumberg

Research Assistant searcHIV: Social and Ethical Aspects of Research on Curing HIV BSPH Graduate Health Policy and Management Department University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill meredith_blumberg@med.unc.edu

Qingyan Ma

Early Career Researcher; UNC Project-China Qingyan Ma is a medical anthropologist who has been conducting anthropological research on contemporary China for over ten years. Dr. Ma received a PhD in anthropology from Temple University (January 2014). Her dissertation research is … Read more

David Margolis

Dr. Margolis is the leader of CARE:  The Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication. CARE is a New Vision for HIV Research. CARE aims to do what no single laboratory or company can do: pursue a comprehensive collaborative search for approaches to … Read more

Benjamin Meier

Dr. Meier’s interdisciplinary research—at the intersection of international law, public policy, and global health—examines human rights frameworks for global health governance.  Advancing rights-based frameworks for public health, he has written and presented extensively on the development, evolution, and implementation of … Read more

Keymanthri Moodley

Prof Keymanthri Moodley completed her undergraduate medical training in 1988 at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal and spent 3 years in Internal Medicine at King Edward VIII and RK Khan Hospitals. This was followed by postgraduate training in Family Medicine at … Read more

Kate Muessig

Dr. Kate Muessig is a public health interventionist and social scientist whose research centers on the prevention and care of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in the urban United States and in China. She is an assistant professor in … Read more

Raul Necochea

Raúl Necochea obtained his Ph.D. in History from McGill University, and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health before joining UNC’s Department of Social Medicine. He is broadly interested in the history … Read more

Jing-Bao Nie

Jing-Bao Nie was trained originally as a physician in Chinese medicine in China. He then studied sociology in Canada, and the medical humanities and bioethics in the USA. His extensive research takes a distinctive transcultural approach to bioethics and cultural … Read more

Shan Qiao

Shan Qiao, a PhD in the Department of International Health in Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, now works as a post-doc fellow in the Pediatrics Prevention Research Center in Wayne State University School of Medicine. With an academic … Read more

Stuart Rennie

Stuart Rennie is Associate Professor in Social Medicine. His background is in philosophy and medical anthropology, and his doctoral dissertation concentrated on the impact luck and chance can have on attributions of moral responsibility. Dr. Rennie’s current teaching, research and … Read more

Zachary Rich

Zachary C. Rich is a fourth year medical student at Tufts University School of Medicine with an interest in the social determinants of health. Through the Doris Duke Foundation he will spend a year working with Dr. Joseph Tucker on … Read more

Malika Roman Isler

Malika is the inaugural Director of Wellbeing at Wake Forest University.  As a Wake Forest alumnna, Malika has a Bachelor of Science in Health and Exercise Science.  She continued her studies and completed a Master of Public Health (Health Promotion) … Read more

Theresa Rossouw

Professor Theresa Rossouw qualified as a medical doctor (MBChB) in 1996 and then completed an MPhil (Applied Ethics), MPH (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) and a PhD in applied biomedical ethics focusing on concepts of personhood and autonomy in a multicultural society, … Read more

Mark Siedner

Dr. Mark Siedner is an infectious disease clinician and researcher in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His academic investigations are focused in southwestern Uganda with the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health, where he … Read more

Jeremy Sugarman

Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA is Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Bioethics and Medicine, professor of medicine, professor of Health Policy and Management, and deputy director for medicine of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Dr. Sugarman’s research focuses … Read more

Tamara Taggart

Tamara Taggart received her AB from Dartmouth College, MPH from Columbia University, and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Health Behavior). She currently works as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Yale University. Her research focuses on religion, … Read more

Joseph Tucker

  Assistant Professor, UNC School of Medicine Director, UNC Project-China Email: jdtucker@unc.edu Education PhD, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2014 M.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004 M.A., Harvard University, 2010 Research Interests Syphilis and HIV … Read more

Paul Volberding

I was trained in Medical Oncology but became involved in the early AIDS epidemic in San Francisco based at San Francisco General Hospital. I have worked in clinical trials in HIV-related malignancies but primarily in the development of antiretroviral therapy. … Read more

Warren Whipple

Research Specialist, UNC Center for Bioethics Research Ethics Program Manager, UNC TraCS ww@unc.edu