The HIV Medicine Association, or HIVMA, has honored UNC infectious diseases professor Ada Adimora, MD, MPH, with its 2020 Clinical Educator Award. The award, presented during the annual IDWeek conference, recognizes Adimora’s “extraordinary contributions to advancing clinical education, with a focus on disseminating her research on the drivers of HIV-related racial disparities.”
Adimora is the Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor in UNC School of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases and a professor of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of STDs and HIV in women and under-served populations in order to reduce transmission rates using community-based approaches. In 2019, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. She joined the UNC infectious diseases faculty in 1993.
HIVMA announced Adimora’s award at its 2020 IDWeek conference in late October. Adimora presented the conference’s Edward H. Kass Lecture, a talk titled “All Policy Is Health Policy: Pathways to HIV (and COVID-19).”
“Dr. Adimora is very deserving of this prestigious award from HIVMA,” says Myron Cohen, MD, director of UNC’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases. “Ada is a first-rate scientist and compassionate physician with an invaluable commitment to health equity and access to healthcare.”
In September 2020, the University of North Carolina honored Adimora with its annual Thomas Jefferson Award. The award recognizes a UNC faculty member who, through personal influence and performance of duty in teaching, writing and scholarship, has best exemplified the ideals and objectives of Thomas Jefferson. (Read more).
Past HIVMA Clinical Educator Award winners include Joseph Eron, Jr., MD, chair of UNC’s Division of Infectious Diseases, in 2013.