Outstanding Minority Physicians Receive Awards Dedicated To HIV Medicine

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 05 May 2009 - 4:00 PDT

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Two promising young physicians have been awarded this year's Minority Clinical Fellowship Awards by the HIV Medicine Association. The program offers leading African American and Latino physicians the opportunity to receive a year of dedicated clinical training in HIV medicine in hospitals and clinics with large minority HIV patient populations.

This year's recipients, Carolina Abuelo, MD, at the Miriam Hospital in Rhode Island and Oni Blackstock, MD, at the Harlem Hospital in New York were each selected to receive awards funding a year of HIV clinical training and education. For both, working with minority HIV/AIDS patients is the result of a desire to provide quality HIV care to the disproportionately affected African American and Latino populations.

While African Americans and Latinos account for 67 percent of AIDS cases in the United States, there is a dearth of African-American and Latino physicians in this field of care, as is true in medicine generally. The Minority Clinical Fellowship program was created to help reverse this health crisis and increase the number of minority clinicians committed to caring for those who have the disease.

"We're delighted that an outstanding pool of candidates resulted in the selection of two very dedicated individuals," said HIVMA Board of Directors Chair Arlene Bardeguez, MD, MPH. "It is critical that there be a continuous influx of new clinicians to the field of HIV medicine. These fellowships have allowed us to recognize these talented young physicians whose work and dedication to work with the underserved population already impresses, and promises more to come."

The HIVMA Minority Clinical Fellowship recipients will begin their one-year fellowships in July. The fellowships provide each recipient a stipend plus benefits for one year as well as financial support for the fellow's mentor.

Dr. Abuelo, who has completed her residency in internal medicine, will focus on HIV care for patients seen in the Miriam Hospital Immunology Clinic in Rhode Island. The clinic services a large patient population that is over 50 percent African American and Latino. She will receive mentoring and clinical instruction from Susan Cu-Uvin, MD and Timothy Flanigan, MD.

Dr. Blackstock is finishing her chief residency at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, which serves a population that is primarily made up of African American and Latino patients. She will complete her fellowship with mentoring and clinical instruction from Vel Sivapalan, MD.

HIVMA received support for the fellowships from Bristol Myers-Squibb, Gilead Sciences, Pfizer, and Tibotec Therapeutics.

About The HIVMA Minority Clinical Fellowship Recipients

Carolina Abuelo, MD

"People with HIV teach me so much, not only about the lives of others but my own life as well," says Dr. Carolina Abuelo, a primary care physician in Boston.

Dr. Abuelo, who has had both HIV research and clinical experience and will complete her fellowship training at Brown University, finds that there is more to the field that just medicine. "We all need to hear now and then that we are doing a good job, especially someone who has to manage a chronic and stigmatizing disease on a daily basis," says Dr. Abuelo. "Often the therapeutic value of my relationship with a patient has more to do with an approach that is personal, cultural, and nurturing rather than simply transferring rote clinical knowledge."

After completing her residency training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Dr. Abuelo used her Spanish language and cultural skills as an internist at the South End Community Health Center, where most of her patients were from the Dominican Republic. As she explains, "The HIVMA Minority Clinical Fellowship offers the cornerstone of my training: an opportunity to focus on HIV care for the many minority patients seen in the Miriam Hospital Immunology Clinic. It will allow me to move towards my ultimate professional goal of working with HIV-positive Latino patients in a clinical setting."

Oni Blackstock, MD

As a resident at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, Dr. Oni Blackstock was witness to the devastation caused by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. "I saw firsthand the destructive effects of the epidemic, especially on the health of African American and Latino populations in the borough. As an African American physician, I feel an especially personal commitment to working towards decreasing the incidence of HIV/AIDS given its proportionally higher incidence in African American communities."

As a part of her training at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Blackstock had the opportunity to travel to Ghana and see firsthand the overwhelming social and economic toll of the epidemic. During her residency in the Bronx, Dr. Blackstock cared for HIV-positive patients at various stages of the disease, including those with end-stage AIDS. Comparing these two experiences, it became clear to her that this disease knows no economic barriers. "It was a wake-up call for me that in a country such as ours with immense medical resources, we are not immune to the devastatingly widespread effects of HIV."

"I consider providing competent, high-quality care to people living with HIV/AIDS an integral aspect of helping to stem the HIV/AIDS epidemic," says Dr. Blackstock. "Ultimately, this fellowship will allow me to work both within and beyond the walls of a primary care office, and help me to positively impact the community more directly."

HIVMA is the professional home for more than 3,600 physicians, scientists and other health care professionals dedicated to the field of HIV/AIDS. Nested within the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), HIVMA promotes quality in HIV care and advocates policies that ensure a comprehensive and humane response to the AIDS pandemic informed by science and social justice. IDSA is a professional society representing more than 8,600 physicians and scientists who specialize in infectious diseases. For more information, visit our websites: www.hivma.org and http://www.idsociety.org.

Source
HIVMA

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