About

Audrey Pettifor, PhD, MPH is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on developing and evaluating HIV prevention and care interventions among adolescents and young adults globally. Dr. Pettifor has expertise on HIV prevention, HIV testing, the HIV treatment cascade, implementation science, and structural interventions among adolescents and young adults. Dr. Pettifor has worked in South Africa since 1996 and is an Honorary Professor of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dr. Pettifor has led a large portfolio of NIH-funded research on HIV prevention and care among adolescents and adults and has published over 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals. She is MPI of a Fogarty D43 training grant in Implementation Science for HIV prevention with the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa which she has led for close to 10 years and is a member of the Fogarty Adolescent HIV Implementation Science Alliance (AHISA). She is co-director of the UNC CFAR Developmental Core and is co-chair of the NIH HPTN adolescent science committee. She is also currently leading a trial in the US Adolescent Trials Network among LGBTQ+ adolescents to evaluate the effect of home and community-based PrEP distribution on adherence. Dr.Pettifor brings her extensive expertise in HIV prevention with young women in South Africa and her expertise in using implementation science to evaluate effective prevention modalities to improve implementation in both Africa and the U.S.

In the news

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  NIAID recognizes HPTN’s groundbreaking work in covid prevention tools

  The 2022 HPTN Annual Meeting took place June 5-8 in Washington, D.C., bringing hundreds of worldwide researchers, collaborators, community representatives, and government health officials together to share updates and accomplishments and re-engage with each other as a community. HPTN Principal Investigators Myron Cohen, MD, director of the UNC Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases … Read more

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  Effect of intimate partner violence on oral PrEP adherence among adolescent girls and young women

  Intimate partner violence events may either impede or motivate PrEP adherence among African adolescent girls and young women, with age appearing to be an important consideration for IPV-related adherence interventions, according to IGHID researchers Lisa Hightow-Weidman, MD, MPH, professor of infectious diseases and principal investigator for the UNC Behavioral and Technology Lab, and Audrey Pettifor, … Read more

Education