Epidemiology

For a number of years, Sarah has worked in international public health - focusing on HIV prevention among women. Following her MPH degree in Sociomedical Sciences, she worked in the microbicides research program at the Population Council in New York prior to pursuing a doctoral degree in epidemiology at the Mailman School.

Sarah’s public health interests have taken her around the world, as her research on HIV incidence surveillance and methodology have provided opportunities to work with other researchers in Kigali, Rwanda. Since 2005, Sarah has worked on a study to measure HIV incidence among two groups of high-risk women in Kigali, in order to inform prevention strategies.

Her work has been recognized by the CDC which gave her a grant for her dissertation research. “This supplemental grant from CDC will allow my colleagues and me to collect important additional data in Kigali, especially to evaluate the validity of antibody-based incidence assays for estimating HIV incidence in the Rwandan setting,” explains Sarah.

"Doing original research while following the doctoral curriculum as a CIDER fellow at the Mailman School has given me a unique and special opportunity. My academic training as a doctoral student has influenced my research on the ground in Rwanda, and my professional experiences outside the classroom have undoubtedly shaped my academic experience.”

Sarah is also a fellow in the National Institutes of Health Infectious Disease Epidemiology Training program.