Monica Gandhi

Last updated

Monica Gandhi
Monica Gandhi 03.jpg
Monica Gandhi in 2021
Education University of Utah
Harvard Medical School
University of California, San Francisco
University of California, Berkeley
Medical career
InstitutionsUniversity of California, San Francisco

Monica Gandhi is an American physician and professor. She teaches medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is director of the UCSF Gladstone Center for AIDS Research and the medical director of the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86. Her research considers HIV prevalence in women, as well as HIV treatment and prevention. She has been noted as a critic of some aspects of the COVID-19 lockdowns in the US.

Contents

Early life and education

Gandhi was born to Indian American immigrant parents. Her father, Om P. Gandhi, was a professor of Electrical Engineering and former department chair at the University of Utah. [1] Her father returned to his home country of India to teach physics after he earned his doctoral degree at the University of Michigan in the 1950s. [2] He returned to the United States in 1967, with his wife Santosh, who would work as a computer scientist at 3M. [2]

Gandhi earned her bachelor's degree in 1991 from the University of Utah. [3] While an undergraduate, she worked in the laboratory of John S. Parkinson, where she studied the flagellar motor switch proteins in Escherichia coli . [3] She earned a medical degree from Harvard Medical School before completing an internship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and, after residency, completed a fellowship at the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies. [4] She earned a Master's in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001, with a focus on epidemiology and biostatistics. [1] She said that she became interested in HIV care after several of her friends came out as gay during high school and struggled with the associated stigma. [1]

Research and career

HIV

Gandhi has studied the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in American women [5] and investigated sex differences in the management of HIV/AIDS. [4] She has studied HIV treatment during pregnancy, with a focus on the safety of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in women with reproductive potential. [6] In 2017, she opened a geriatric clinic at the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86. [7]

COVID-19

Gandhi has criticized certain aspects of COVID-19 lockdowns, especially those imposed in the San Francisco Bay area, for being blunt measures lacking in concern for individual behavioral choices, desire to be with people, and their effect on outpatient care and mental health; she has expressed her concerns in The Atlantic , The Washington Post , and other media outlets, but her views go against a majority of domain-experts. [8] [9] She has highlighted how lockdowns, compounded with a fear of contracting COVID-19, have excluded those living with HIV from receiving optimum care, leading to preventable fatalities. [10] [9]

Gandhi has made a statement understating the risk of COVID-19 infection to children: in May 2021 she said children and young adults had only 1 in a million chance of dying. At the time 306 children in the USA had already died from COVID; for Gandhi's statement to be accurate there would have to have been at least four times as many infected children in the country than actually existed. [11] : 315 

Gandhi advocated for a "risk reduction strategy" by conceding that all people cannot inhabit an ideal risk-free environment and hence work to ensure that they wear masks and maintain distancing, and later, get vaccinated. [8] [9] [12] She has been a consistent advocate against closing of schools throughout the pandemic especially with the availability of effective vaccines. [8] [9] In April 2022, she leveraged the same argument to support the end of universal mask mandates, particularly for children. [12] These views have spurred criticism and targeted harassment, much of it on Twitter, both for her pro-mask views, and her views on opening schools and easing lockdowns despite fact based evidence supporting her opinion. [9]

Academic activities

Supported by the National Institutes of Health, Gandhi developed a mentoring program that supports early career investigators from diverse backgrounds. [13] [14] She also established a mentoring workshop series for HIV investigators across the United States, Peru, and South Africa. [13] From 2008 to 2015, she directed the Communicable Diseases of Global Health Importance program. [15] In 2019, Gandhi delivered the convocation speech at the University of Utah. [1] She has written for The Conversation . [16]

Personal life

Gandhi was married to Rakesh Mishra, Professor of Medicine at UCSF, until his death in November 2019. [17] They have two children. [17] [9]

Awards and honours

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of California, San Francisco</span> Public university in California, US

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It conducts research and teaching in medical and biological sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Gerberding</span> American physician, educator, infectious disease specialist (born 1955)

Julie Louise Gerberding is an American infectious disease expert who was the first woman to serve as the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of May 2022, she is the CEO of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH). Gerberding grew up in Estelline, South Dakota, attended Brookings High School, and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Case Western Reserve University. She was the chief medical resident at the University of California, San Francisco where she treated hospitalized AIDS patients in the first years of the epidemic. Gerberding became a nationally-recognized figure during the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States during her tenure as the acting deputy director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, where she was a prominent spokeswoman for the CDC during daily briefings regarding the attacks and aftermath. Gerberding then served as CDC director from 2002 to 2009, and was then hired as an administrator at Merck.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcus Conant</span> American dermatologist (born 1936)

Marcus Augustine Conant is an American dermatologist and one of the first physicians to diagnose and treat Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in 1981. He helped create one of the largest private AIDS clinics, was a founder of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and his work contributed to development of some of today's top HIV medications. He has written over 70 publications on the treatment of AIDS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sue Desmond-Hellmann</span> American oncologist, academic, and nonprofit administrator (born 1958)

Sue Desmond-Hellmann is an American oncologist and biotechnology leader who served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014 to 2020. In March 2024 she was elected as a board member of OpenAI. She was previously Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the first woman to hold the position, and Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professor, and before that president of product development at Genentech, where she played a role in the development of the first gene-targeted cancer drugs, Avastin and Herceptin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eric Goosby</span> American public health official

Eric Goosby is an American public health official, currently serving as Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Global Health Delivery, Diplomacy and Economics, Institute for Global Health Sciences at University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Goosby previously served as the UN Special Envoy on Tuberculosis as well as previously served as the United States Global AIDS Coordinator from 2009 until mid-November 2013. In the role, Goosby directed the U.S. strategy for addressing HIV around the world and led President Obama's implementation of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Goosby was sworn in during June 2009 and resigned in November 2013, taking a position as a professor at UCSF, where he directs the Center for Global Health Delivery and Diplomacy, a collaboration between UCSF and the University of California, Berkeley.

Paul A. Volberding is an American physician who is best known for his pioneering work in treating people with HIV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Buchbinder</span> American physician

Susan Buchbinder is an American physician who is best known for her work in HIV prevention and as a researcher in the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. In 2011, she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is Clinical Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James W. Curran</span> Professor of epidemiology and pioneering HIV/AIDS researcher

James W. Curran is professor of epidemiology and dean of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He is an adjunct Professor of Medicine and Nursing, and Co-Director and Principal Investigator of the Emory Center for AIDS Research. He is immediate past chair of the board on Population Health and Public Health Practice of the Institute of Medicine and served on the Executive Committee of the Association of Schools of Public Health. Additionally, he holds an endowed chair known as the James W. Curran Dean of Public Health. Curran is considered to be a pioneer, leader, and expert in the field of HIV/AIDS.

The UCSF School of Medicine is a multisite medical school of the University of California, San Francisco, with a historical campus located at the base of Mount Sutro on the Parnassus Heights campus in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1864 by Hugh Toland, it is the oldest medical school in California and in the western United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo</span> American epidemiologist and physician

Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo is an American epidemiologist and physician. She is the 17th Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the JAMA Network. She is Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Lee Goldman, MD Endowed Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. She is a general internist and attending physician at San Francisco General Hospital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diane Havlir</span> US leader of HIV/AIDS work

Diane Havlir is an American physician who is a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the HIV/AIDS Division at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research considers novel therapeutic strategies to improve the lives of people with HIV and to support public health initiatives in East Africa. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019.

Susan Kleppner Folkman is an American psychologist, author, and emerita professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). She is internationally recognized for her contributions to the field of psychological stress and coping. Her 1984 book Stress, Appraisal and Coping alongside Richard S. Lazarus, is the most widely cited academic book in its field, and the 17th most cited book in social science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David M. Smith (virologist)</span> American translational research virologist (born 1971)

David "Davey" M. Smith, is an American translational research virologist, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego, co-director of the San Diego Center for AIDS Research, and vice chair of research in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego. His research interests include transmission, prevention, and treatment of both HIV and SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19). Since joining the UC San Diego faculty in 2003, Smith has been awarded more than $37 million in federal funding as a principal investigator. His research interests include transmission, prevention, and treatment of both HIV and COVID-19.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhea Boyd</span> American paediatrician

Rhea W. Boyd is an American pediatrician and child and community health advocate. Boyd is a popular science communicator, making use of social media to amplify a diverse range of voices in an effort to improve the heath of communities of colour.

Jacqueline Nwando Olayiwola is an American family physician, public health professional, author, professor, and women's empowerment leader. She is the Senior Vice President and Chief Health Equity Officer of Humana and a chair and Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Prior to her appointment at OSU, she served as the inaugural Chief Clinical Transformation Officer for RubiconMD, an eConsult platform that improves primary care access to specialty care for underserved patients. Olayiwola is dedicated to serving marginalized patient populations and addressing the social determinants through community and technology-based infrastructures of healthcare reform. She has published articles on the use of eConsults and telehealth to provide underserved patients with primary care treatments so that they have a low cost and efficient means of reaching specialized care. Olayiwola has founded numerous non-profits and healthcare start-ups such as GIRLTALK Inc, Inspire Health Solutions LLC, and the Minority Women Professionals are MVPs Program. She has been recognized at the national and international level for her work and efforts to educate, advocate and provide healthcare to those in need. She was named Woman of the Year by the American Telemedicine Association in 2019, and received the Public Health Innovator Award from Harvard School of Public Health in 2019, as well as being named one of America's Top Family Doctors from 2007 to 2008 by the Consumers Research Council of America.

Elena Fuentes-Afflick is an American pediatrician who is Chief of Pediatrics at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. She is the former President of the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society. In 2010 she was elected a to the National Academy of Medicine.

Michelle Asha Albert is an American physician who is the Walter A. Haas Lucie-Stern Endowed Chair in Cardiology and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Albert is director of the UCSF Center for the Study of Adversity and Cardiovascular Disease. She is president of the American Heart Association. She served as the president of the Association of Black Cardiologists in 2020–2022 and as president of the Association of University Cardiologists (2021–2022). Albert is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigators and the Association of American Physicians.

Herminia Palacio is an American nonprofit executive who was formerly CEO of the Guttmacher Institute. She formerly served as Deputy Mayor of New York City for Health and Human Services under Bill de Blasio from 2016 to 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Aberg</span> American physician

Judith Aberg is an American physician who is the George Baehr Professor of Clinical Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. She was appointed Dean of System Operations for Clinical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research considered infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS and COVID-19.

Shannon Hader is an American public health physician who is the Dean of the School of International Service at American University. She is a published scientist and doctor, primarily focused on the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Her research specializes in infectious diseases.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Convocation 2019 | College of Science". science.utah.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  2. 1 2 "The Gandhis, BS'86, 91, 92 | College of Science". science.utah.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 "Our DNA - Spring 2020". Issuu. May 5, 2020. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  4. 1 2 "Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH | UCSF-Gladstone Center for AIDS Research (CFAR)". cfar.ucsf.edu. April 2003. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  5. ↑ "CFAR Seminar: Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH--Novel approaches to measuring adherence in HIV treatment and prevention | Center for AIDS Research". depts.washington.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  6. ↑ "Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH: The Unknowns of ART in Pregnancy". ContagionLive. March 12, 2019. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  7. ↑ "New SF General clinic treats older HIV patients". SFChronicle.com. February 3, 2017. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  8. 1 2 3 SFGATE, Eric Ting (February 24, 2021). "Stop panicking about the COVID-19 variants, says UCSF's Monica Gandhi". SFGATE. Retrieved April 20, 2022.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kost, Ryan (October 17, 2021). "Monica Gandhi is S.F.'s outlier COVID expert. Her view on it: 'I'm not saying anything crazy'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  10. ↑ Brink, Susan (July 14, 2020). "What Happens When A Pandemic And An Epidemic Collide". NPR.org. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
  11. ↑ Howard J (2023). We Want Them Infected: How the failed quest for herd immunity led doctors to embrace the anti-vaccine movement and blinded Americans to the threat of COVID. Redhawk Publications. ISBN   9781959346036.
  12. 1 2 Gandhi, Daniel Halperin, Jeanne Noble, Norman Hearst and Monica (April 19, 2022). "Four COVID experts say it's time to accept reality: 'Vaccines work, masks do not'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved April 20, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. 1 2 3 "Clinical Educator Award". www.hivma.org. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  14. ↑ Gandhi, Monica; Johnson, Mallory (2016). "Creating More Effective Mentors: Mentoring the Mentor". AIDS and Behavior. 20 Suppl 2: 294–303. doi:10.1007/s10461-016-1364-3. ISSN   1573-3254. PMC   4995126 . PMID   27039092.
  15. ↑ "Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH | HIV, ID and Global Medicine". hividgm.ucsf.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  16. ↑ "Monica Gandhi". The Conversation. May 15, 2020. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  17. 1 2 "In Memoriam: the passing of UCSF professor Dr. Rakesh Mishra". Department of Medicine. December 5, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  18. ↑ "UCSF Office of Medical Education Annual Report: 2011-12". Issuu. November 8, 2012. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  19. ↑ Murphy, Paula (August 22, 2013). "Global Health Sciences Honors Latest Graduating Class and Retiring Director". Global Health Sciences Honors Latest Graduating Class and Retiring Director | UC San Francisco. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  20. ↑ "HIV Medicine Association Honors UCSF HIV Clinic Medical Director Monica Gandhi". India West. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  21. ↑ "Academic Senate Faculty Award Recipients and Archive | UCSF Academic Senate". senate.ucsf.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  22. ↑ ""Resilience": An Interview with Monica Gandhi – AIDS 2020" . Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  23. ↑ "AIDS 2020: UCSF Experts to Speak, Present at International Conference". AIDS 2020: UCSF Experts to Speak, Present at International Conference | UC San Francisco. July 2020. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  24. ↑ Liggins, Greg (June 14, 2021). "San Mateo County gears up to celebrate state's reopening". KTVU FOX 2. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
  25. ↑ "Department of Medicine Newsletter - July 2021". d19cgyi5s8w5eh.cloudfront.net. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.