Nhial T. Tutlam, PhD, MPH
Theresa Anasti, PhD
HIP Seminars are designed to enhance mentoring and peer-to-peer connections among emerging HIV investigators, supporting their career development and helping them successfully obtain NIH funding.
This month’s presentations:
Addressing the mental health impact of war trauma and HIV risk among refugee youth living in refugee settlements in Uganda - Nhial T. Tutlam, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Bursky School of Public Health, Associate Director of Research, International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD), WashU
St. Louis Sex Workers Accessing PrEP -- the STL SWAP study - Theresa Anasti, PhD, Assistant Professor, Brown School of Social Work, WashU
Speaker Bios:
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Jennifer A. Philips is the Co-Director of the Infectious Diseases Division. Dr. Philips is principal investigator of an NIH-funded lab that studies how Mycobacterium tuberculosis evades the host immune response. M. tuberculosis causes TB, one of the world’s most deadly infections. It has infected humans for millenia and is highly adapted to navigate the complexities of the human immune system. The discoveries in the Philips laboratory have delineated how Mtb blocks lysosomal trafficking, alters host metabolism, and impairs antigen presentation. Her laboratory has identified clinically available drugs that restore the ability of the host to clear M. tuberculosis, overcoming key immune evasion strategies of Mtb. These findings may lead to novel host-directed therapies for TB. In recent unpublished work, they showed that the abundance of an M.tuberculosis-host co-metabolite in sputum and plasma distinguishes Mtb-infected patients from uninfected controls. This may enable development of biomarkers to individualize TB treatment. Thus, by making fundamental discoveries in Mtb pathogenesis, her group hopes to enable better therapies, novel biomarkers, and effective vaccines for one of humankind’s greatest afflictions.
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Theresa Anasti is an organizational scholar and social worker who focuses on understanding the role of nonprofit and community-based organizations in bettering the conditions for underrepresented populations. She is especially interested in the role of such organizations in working with and for “unpopular” and criminalized populations stigmatized by wider society, including sex workers, active drug users, and the unhoused.
Her qualitative work asks several questions important for the consideration of organizations that provide human services and advocate for underrepresented populations. First, how are people with lived experience included in the design and implementation of services that are meant to improve their lives? Second, how do leaders of mutual aid and grassroots organizations (particularly those made up of people with lived experience) contend with the tensions between their radical support work and the realities of nonprofit work? Third, how do frontline service providers, as street level bureaucrats, actually think about, and provide services to unpopular populations? At stake is a practical question for the field: how can we best provide anti-carceral, trauma-informed human services and resources to populations that are themselves marginalized within the field of social work?
Past work has included a large-scale qualitative project of relationships between mainstream human service nonprofits and a sex workers’ rights organization, highlighting the need for professionalization and the complexities of inter-organizational collaboration for organizations in policy fields that may be perceived as controversial. Emerging work includes a qualitative study of individuals working at syringe service programs (SSPs), and how they have adapted to changes in the field’s political and funding environments.
Prior to her role at the Brown School, Dr. Anasti was an Associate Professor of Social Work and BSW Program Director at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. She is an avid harm reductionist.
To receive a recurring Outlook invitation, email the D-CFAR Admin Core. This is a free event, but registration is required.