Focus on Research: HIV/AIDS

Carlos Del Rio, MD (Division of Infectious Diseases) is a professor of medicine in the Emory University Department of Medicine. Dr. del Rio first arrived at Emory University with an interest in cardiology in the early 1990s. However, with the dawn of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, he made the decision to shift his focus to infectious diseases.

Dr. del Rio has held several prominent leadership roles in the field of public health, including executive director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico and program director and principal investigator of the Emory AIDS International Training and Research Program.

“It is clear that the major drivers of HIV infection are poverty, unemployment, lack of education and health insurance,” del Rio says. “Addressing HIV in the South requires us also to address the social determinants of health. If you add stigma, discrimination, and racism, you have a perfect milieu for high HIV rates.”

His research efforts focus on access to care and barriers to care among HIV-infected persons in the United States and how HIV-infected patients utilize health care resources. He also studies opportunistic infections and HIV/AIDS-associated risk behaviors as well as adherence and the impact of therapy on behavior. Finally, he is interested in the spectrum and impact of AIDS in developing countries and issues related to access to care in resource-poor settings. He is the clinical research site leader for the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) and the PI for the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) in Atlanta.

Dr. del Rio has made significant progress in the understanding of the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, HIV testing, access to care, and full compliance with antiretroviral drug programs.

 

Read more about Carlos del Rio, MD

Carlos del Rio, MD

Carlos del Rio, MD is the Hubert Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health and a professor of medicine in the Emory University Division of Infectious Diseases. He is also program director of the Emory AIDS International Training and Research Program and co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). Dr. del Rio is a native of Mexico, where he attended medical school at Universidad La Salle, graduating in 1983. He completed his internal medicine and infectious diseases residencies at Emory University. In 1989, he returned to Mexico, where he served as executive director of the National AIDS Council of Mexico from 1992-1996. He joined the Emory faculty in November of 1996. Dr. del Rio was chief of the Emory Medical Service at Grady Memorial Hospital from 2001-2009. His research interests include the epidemiology of opportunistic infections in HIV and other immune deficiencies, the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and issues related to early diagnosis of HIV. Read more

 

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Emory Department of Medicine
The Department of Medicine, part of Emory University's School of Medicine, promotes excellence in education, patient care, and clinical and basic research.

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