IHCCM - Faculty

Steffanie A. Strathdee, Professor, is an infectious disease epidemiologist who has spent the last two decades focusing on underserved, marginalized populations in developed and developing countries. Since January, 2004, she has been the Harold Simon Chair and Chief of the Division of International Health and Cross Cultural Medicine in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Her recent work has focused on the prevention of blood borne infections and barriers to care among injection drug using populations, specifically HIV and viral hepatitis. In the last decade, she has published over 200 peer-reviewed publications on HIV prevention and the natural history of HIV infection. She is the principal investigator of several behavioral intervention studies among drug users, and has played a leading role in evaluations of needle exchange programs in Canada and the United States. Currently, she is engaged in research projects in a number of international settings, including Mexico (see Proyecto El Cuete website), Brazil, Canada, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and Russia. She leads a cross-border HIV prevention training program as a TIES partnership between UCSD, San Diego State University (SDSU), El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) and Universidad Autonoma de Baja California at Tijuana (UABC) (see TIES website).

Selected Publications:

Strathdee SA, Palepu A, Cornelisse PGA, Yip B, O’Shaughnessy MV, Montaner JST, Schechter MT, Hogg RS. Barriers to utilization of antiretroviral therapies among HIV-infected injection drug users in a universal health care setting. JAMA 1998;280(6): 547-549.

Strathdee SA, van Ameijden E, Mesquita F, Wodak A, Rana S, Vlahov D. Can HIV epidemics among injection drug users be prevented? AIDS 1998; 12 (suppl A: S71-79).

Bastos, FI, Strathdee SA. Evaluating effectiveness of syringe exchange programmes: current issues and future prospects. Social Science & Medicine 2000;51:1771-1782.

Strathdee SA, Galai N, Safaiean M, Celentano DD, Vlahov D, Nelson K. Sex differences in risk factors for HIV seroconversion among injection drug users: Arch Int Med: 2001;161:1281-1288.

Strathdee SA, Zafar T, Brahmbhatt H, Baksh A, ul Hassan S. Rise in needle sharing among injection drug users in Pakistan during the Afghanistan war. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2003;71:17-24.

Zafar T, Brahmbhatt H, Imam G, ul Hassan S, Strathdee SA. HIV knowledge and risk behaviors among Pakistan and Afghani drug users in Quetta Pakistan. J.Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2003;32(4):394-8.