Infectious Disease Expert Jennifer Jao to Help Lead AIDS Clinical-Trials Network

Jao will help shape the scientific agenda at the International Maternal Pediatric and Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network

Jennifer Jao, MD, MPH, a pediatric infectious disease expert and the Susan B. DePree Founders’ Board Professor of Pediatric Adolescent and Maternal HIV Infection, has been selected as co-chair of the International Maternal Pediatric and Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) Network funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

With more than 50 clinical-trials sites across the world, IMPAACT is the largest international HIV clinical-trials network addressing pregnant, pediatric and adolescent populations. Jao, a professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases and a physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago,  is the first person from Northwestern to serve as co-chair for the organization.

Serving alongside Sharon Nachman, MD, from Stony Brook University, Jao will help shape the scientific agenda, as well as lead the operational and administrative aspects of the network to improve the health and well-being of infants, children and pregnant/postpartum individuals affected by HIV and its co-morbidities worldwide.

Jao has been involved with the network as protocol co-chair of IMPAACT P1115, which reported promising findings last year that children born with HIV who started treatment promptly after birth surpassed a year of remission after pausing antiretroviral therapy.

“I am extremely humbled and excited to co-chair the IMPAACT Network as it ends the HIV epidemic in the most strategic populations for our future: infants, children and pregnant individuals,” said Jao, also the director of the section on maternal, pediatric and adolescent HIV infection at Lurie Children’s and a member of Northwestern’s Robert J. Havey, MD Institute for Global Health.

“As an infectious disease specialist and principal investigator of multiple NIH-funded international and domestic studies, I understand the unique potential of the IMPAACT Network,” Jao said. “I very much look forward to learning from and partnering with Dr. Nachman and the current IMPAACT leadership to lead the network into the future.”

Jao also serves as a member of the IMPAACT Therapeutics Scientific Committee and is one of the principal investigators of the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS) Network. In addition, she has led multiple studies worldwide of pregnant people living with HIV, and their children, as well as adolescents and youth with perinatally acquired HIV.

Listen to Jao discuss her research in HIV maternal and child health in the In Pursuit podcast from Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Lurie Children’s.