A huge congratulations to Dr. Nada Fadul, who was recently featured in the the NIH Office of Research on Woman’s Health’s quarterly publication: Woman’s Heath In Focus at NIH. The article explores Dr. Fadul’s work advancing long-acting antiretroviral medications, especially for women living in rural areas. See below for a snapshot of the feature, and here to check out the full story (see page 5).
“So much attention is focused on racial disparities among men living with HIV that disparities among women are sometimes overlooked, says Nada Fadul, M.D., who serves as assistant dean and professor of medicine in the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases and medical director of the UNMC Specialty Care Center. Yet, disparities among women are often stark. In Nebraska, for example, Black women are diagnosed with HIV at eight times the rate of White women. Although effective antiviral regimens are available, multiple social and structural factors can reduce women’s ability to adhere to therapy and maintain viral suppression, including substance use, lack of health insurance or health care access, and intimate partner violence. In addition, health care access can be particularly challenging for women living in rural areas.
Dr. Fadul is now testing a new program to facilitate access to long-acting antiviral injections, taken every 2 months, at rural clinics. Women living in rural areas often cannot drive for hours every 2 months to receive their injections, so this program is providing injectables to local clinics and then using telehealth to monitor for viral suppression and side effects. One area Dr. Fadul would like to see explored further is promoting a sense of self-efficacy among women living with HIV. Researchers have found that higher self-efficacy corresponds to better treatment adherence and viral suppression among women. She shared that clinicians and other health care workers should do more while “working with women living with HIV to improve their self- efficacy and to empower them to see themselves as still beautiful, still worthy, still effective, still contributing to the society in a positive way while living with HIV.”
Congrats Dr. Fadul! Understanding and correcting HIV woman’s health disparities is a critically important effort, and your work does not go unnoticed (by us or the NIH). Thank you for all you do for patients, HIV care, and the ID community!