When epidemiology graduate student Nilkanth (Neil) Calimlim-Khot talks about his interests, his professional and personal experiences naturally intersect. As a study coordinator for HIV research with incarcerated individuals through the UNC School of Medicine’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, and an injury epidemiologist at the N.C. Office of Violence Prevention with partnerships at the Department of Public Safety and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, Neil sees public health as a pathway for improving health and bringing meaningful change.
Intervention to Prevent HIV
Neil’s work with Dr. Becky White, the director of UNC Infectious Diseases and HIV Services in the N.C. Department of Adult Corrections, focuses on a stark reality: people leaving prison face a dramatically higher risk of HIV. Evidence shows that a released individual is less likely to come back to prison if they can continue health care. Studies also show that community health workers, with lived experience of incarceration, can become trusted partners in health for individuals reentering their communities.
Neil is working White’s team to introduce HIV prevention PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV) services for womenthrough trusted community health workers. Leveraging the N.C. FIT program, founded by Dr. Evan Ashkin with UNC’s Department of Family Medicine, Neil is helping to shape the infrastructure behind the study. He’s currently writing protocols, coordinating partners, and building a REDCap database that will capture data from questionnaires administered inside the prison.
“The goal is to ultimately reduce HIV in released incarcerated individuals,” explains Neil. “This means initiating conversations about HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis early on and then creating a bridge with community clinics once they’re released so that they can start on PrEP medication to lessen their likelihood of contraction.”
Neil says the work is about building trust while reducing the stigma that shadows incarcerated people, recognizing challenges with medication adherence and stigma. He says the study reinforces his own beliefs that effective care must consider the structural and social barriers that patients face, particularly those with fewer resources and support. A big part of the study’s vision, as Neil sees it, is to change the narrative.
“In the end, we want to help these underrepresented populations have a chance to live healthy and hopeful lives.”
Moments That Set His Path
As a college freshman at NC State, he experienced a cardiac arrest following complications from thyroid surgery that damaged his parathyroid glands. This event fundamentally changed how he thought about what he wanted to do with his life. Another personal experience, losing his friend to gun violence, showed Neil an area of public health that urgently needed attention: gun violence.
“I didn’t want this loss to be the end of the story—I wanted to contribute to a solution to the problem of gun violence.”
Neil partnered with Dr. Sanjay Batish, a family physician practicing in Leland, NC, who is an adjunct professor for the UNC medical school. Batish cares for patients living with the long‑term consequences of gunshot injuries—patients who have become quadriplegic, who have developed opioid dependence to manage chronic pain. For Neil, the work is both academic and deeply personal. He sees it as one piece of a larger, lifelong commitment.
Systems Behind Gun Violence
Working with Dr. Batish, Neil has examined how firearm related harm is measured, documented, and addressed across public health and primary care systems. His work consistently shows how gaps in data limit prevention efforts.
In Why We Still Can’t Measure the Impact of Gun Shows on Firearm Harm, Neil analyzed health, surveillance, and mortality datasets in North Carolina, showing how fragmented systems hinder evaluation of gun show–related harm. In another study, Firearm Related Injuries and Risk Proxies in Primary Care, he found firearm injuries—and related risk factors such as mental health conditions and violence exposure—are inconsistently documented, with clinicians often relying on indirect warning signs rather than firearmspecific screening. In a study that looked at geographic differences in firearm violence (Differences in Firearm Violence among Primary Care Populations across Rural, Suburban, and Urban Areas across the U.S.), Neil synthesized evidence that shows how firearm injury patterns vary by geography and age, with implications for tailored prevention and counseling strategies. He has also presented his work at national conferences including the Firearm and Harm Prevention Conference and North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) Conference.
“My lifelong goal is to make a public health impact while making a clinical difference for individuals. I hope to continue to learn more about epidemiology and further my research on gun violence.”
What ties all of Neil’s work together is compassion–an outlook that shapes everything.
“My profession of choice is for impact,” he said, guiding work that prioritizes real outcomes, from patient care to research and data that improve safety and effectiveness.