Congratulations to Roger Shapiro, a key member of the Harvard AIDS Initiative team, for his recent appointment as an Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In the announcement letter below, Dean Frenk lays out Shapiro’s research accomplishments to date.
Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to announce that Dr. Roger Shapiro has been appointed to the School’s faculty as Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. He has held a secondary appointment with the School since 2006 and will continue to hold an academic appointment as associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. His appointment as primary faculty began on June 15, 2015.
Dr. Shapiro received his medical degree from New York University and a master’s degree in public health from our School. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University. Dr. Shapiro completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital and served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He completed a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital. Currently, he is an attending physician in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Dr. Shapiro has been conducting HIV research since 1999, with a focus on the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) and improving childhood survival in the developing world. He has conducted groundbreaking research in the area of PMTCT via breastfeeding, and the results of his Mma Bana Study were used to inform WHO guidelines for mother-to-child HIV prevention in 2010 and 2013. He has been a member of WHO scientific advisory committees for the creation of guidelines to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission (2005-present), for feeding of HIV-exposed infants (2009-present), and for pediatric HIV treatment (2013).
His achievements also include becoming the first to demonstrate that maternal single dose nevirapine may be avoided in the setting of sufficient antepartum and infant prophylaxis, and, along with co-authors, that non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors may retain efficacy for women when used more than six months from single dose nevirapine exposure. Dr. Shapiro has conducted the largest studies to date evaluating the impact of maternal antiretroviral use in pregnancy on adverse birth outcomes, and he is currently conducting nationwide surveillance of birth outcomes in Botswana. He has conducted several trials aimed at improving survival among HIV-exposed uninfected children in Botswana, and he has recently initiated a trial of early diagnosis and treatment for HIV-infected infants to improve long-term treatment outcomes in these children.
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Roger Shapiro to our primary faculty.
Best wishes,
Julio Frenk
Julio Frenk, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Dean of the Faculty, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
T & G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development,
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy School
Title photo by Kent Dayton