Course Chairs
Tom Coates, Ph.D., is the Michael and Sue Steinberg Endowed Professor of Global AIDS Research within the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCLA. He also leads the Program in Global Health at UCLA. He co-founded the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) at UCSF in 1986 and directed it from 1991 to 2003. He was the founding Executive Director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute, leading it from 1996 to 2003. His areas of emphasis and expertise are HIV prevention, the relationship of prevention and treatment for HIV, and HIV policies. His domestic work has focused on a variety of populations, and he is currently finishing a nationwide clinical trial of an experimental HIV preventive intervention focused on high-risk men. He is also finishing domestic trials of post-exposure prophylaxis. With funding from USAID and WHO, he led a randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of HIV voluntary counseling and testing for individuals and couples in Kenya, Tanzania, and Trinidad. He is now directing a 46 community-randomized clinical trial in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Thailand to determine the impact of strategies for destigmatizing HIV on HIV incidence community wide. He is also leading a prevention clinical trial in South America as part of a 5-country effort, and has a trial in China to determine the impact of prevention in the context of care. He is coprincipal investigator of the NIAID funded HIV Prevention Trials Network, and is conducting policy research domestically and internationally. He was cited in Science in 2002 as the 4th highest funded scientist in the clinical, social, and behavioral sciences and was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2000.
Risa Hoffman, M.D., MPH, is a Clinical Instructor at UCLA in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. Her research focus is on biomedical interventions to prevent HIV. She is currently developing a project investigating whether treatment of a parasite (urinary schistosomiasis) can influence HIV transmission in Malawi. She is working with the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit in Johannesburg on analysis of their PMTCT program, with focus on the use of combination antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy to prevent mother-to-child transmission. Previous research experience has included an evaluation of health infrastructure for HIV/AIDS care in Chiang Mai, Thailand, through the Harvard AIDS Institute in Boston. She has also pursued clinical and health policy work with Children in the Wilderness, a nongovernmental organization serving orphans in Malawi. She received a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University, an MD from the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed her MPH and residency training at Harvard University. She is Board certified in Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and Adult Infectious Diseases.
Lee Miller, M.D., is a Professor of Pediatrics and Vice-Chair for Education of the Department of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Over the last 20 years, in addition to directing the medical student pediatric teaching program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Dr. Miller has also directed the Pediatric Residency Training Program at the same institution. He has significant experience in curriculum design and evaluation, and a great familiarity with the training requirements of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. He has received unprecedented recognition for his contributions as an educator and role model for thousands of medical students and residents over the last 20 years. Dr. Miller has a long time interest in and commitment to international public health and education. As a former consultant for the Diarrheal Disease Program of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, he has made enormous contributions teaching at the medical school faculty level in a multitude of developing nation settings. As the Co-Director and then Director of WHO workshops aimed at strengthening the teaching of diarrheal diseases at the medical school level, Dr. Miller was instrumental in guiding senior faculty members to incorporate new teaching material into existing academic curricula. In this capacity, he has taught senior faculty members within the Departments of Pediatrics and the Departments of Community Medicine from such varied settings as Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, Myanmar, Nepal, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda. Furthermore, he had the opportunity to coordinate the teaching and training activities of the International Federation of the Red Cross in Goma, Zaire during the Rwandan refugee and cholera-dysentery crisis in July and August of 1994. Dr. Miller was subsequently invited to the recently established University of the Transkei School of Medicine in Umtata, South Africa to review the pediatric undergraduate and post-graduate medical education curricula, and to make recommendations to the Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at this institution.
Diana Rickard, M.D., completed her residency in Pediatrics in the Community Health and Advocacy Track at UCLA Medical Center. She is a NIH National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellow in Health Services Research in the Department of Pediatrics at UCLA. She founded a nongovernmental organization in rural Ghana in 2001 and has directed the organization, the Ghana Health and Education Initiative (www.ghei.org), since that time. She has overseen community needs assessment, participatory planning and the evolution of health interventions in nutrition, hygiene, HIV/AIDS, malaria and reproductive health with an emphasis on community ownership and empowerment. She has given numerous workshops on leadership and strategic planning for the International Federation of Medical Student Associations at international conferences, as well as for GHEI’s Ghana-based team. As Executive Director of GHEI, she has also led a support team based in the US on all aspects of nonprofit management including fundraising, financial management, publicity, communication with the Ghana-based team and recruitment and preparation of consultants, coordinators and volunteers. She has worked with more than ninety undergraduate, graduate and medical students on projects in health promotion with a focus on program planning with humility and respect for community knowledge and assets. She also co-created a GHEI sponsored rotation in Ghana for UCLA pediatric residents with a novel approach incorporating public health research, community asset mapping and ethical rural health care practice in 2007. This innovative rotation continues to host residents annually. Her research interests include malaria prevention and participatory program evaluation.
Jennifer Sayles, M.D., MPH graduated from Princeton University and received her M.D. from The Chicago Medical School. She trained in Internal Medicine, completing her internship at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and residency at UCLA Medical Center. She holds a Masters in Public Health from UCLA, and completed a NIH National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowship in Health Services Research at UCLA. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research and on faculty at the UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research and Education. Her research interests include access, adherence, and disparities in HIV treatment and care in both Africa and the US. She currently has a career development award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which focuses on optimizing HIV treatment adherence among post-partum HIV-positive women in Soweto, South Africa. This research is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Glenda Gray and the Perinatal HIV Research Unit. She also conducts research to better understand the impact of stigma on HIV treatment and prevention in vulnerable communities affected by HIV in the US. She has received support from the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), the California HIV Research Program, the UCLA Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), the UCLA Center for HIV Identification Prevention and Treatment Services (CHIPTS) and the Greater Los Angeles Department of Veterans Affairs.