Kathryn Anastos, MD is a physician executive, clinician and medical researcher who for more than 20 years has provided both clinical care and operational and clinical leadership in the South Bronx. She has extensive experience in innovative development of large programs designed to increase access to high quality, culturally sensitive care by poor communities of color, while meeting both a clinical and financial bottom line. She has served as executive director of several large systems of ambulatory care in the Bronx, and has provided leadership during design, construction and opening of new primary care clinics. Clinically Dr. Anastos trained and actively practices as a primary care internist with expertise in the comprehensive care of HIV infected individuals and HIV infection in women.
Since September 2002 Dr. Anastos has devoted her time to patient care and research in HIV infection in women in the United States and Rwanda. A founder of WE-ACTx (Women's Equity in Access to Care and Treatment), a community-based organization devoted to developing high quality ambulatory medical services for HIV infected women in Rwanda, she now serves as its Director of Clinical Systems and Scientific Programs . WE-ACTx collaborates with the Rwandan government and twenty-four non-governmental organizations to provide comprehensive HIV primary care, including antiretroviral therapy as indicated, to women survivors of genocidal rape. She has also developed and serves as Principal Investigator of the Rwandan Women's Cohort Study (RWISA, which in Kinyarwanda means beautiful), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is a Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Dr. Anastos has served since 1993 as the principal investigator of the New York City/Bronx Consortium of the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), the largest of the WIHS sites nationally, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Cancer Institute and National Institute for Drug Abuse. Dr. Anastos's specific areas of research focus include survival and disease progression in women with HIV infection, the role of sex and race in biologically determined responses to infection and treatment, and the contribution of HIV related immune dysfunction or treatment on other medical conditions (e.g.-diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc) already highly prevalent in United States urban communities of color. Dr. Anastos has lectured extensively nationally and internationally to both professional and lay audiences about HIV infection in women and communities of color. She has received multiple awards from the community for her contributions to the health of HIV-infected people in the Bronx, and was cited in 1996 by POZ Magazine as one of the nation's top AIDS researchers.
Dr. Anastos received her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College, Oberlin Ohio, which cemented her commitment to entering Medicine as a vehicle for social change. She earned her medical degree at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine, La Jolla, California in 1980. She did her internship and residency in internal and social medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center, in the Bronx, and finished her post-graduate training as the Chief Medical Resident at Montefiore Medical Center.
Current Investigations
- Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS)
- Rwandan Women's Inter-association Study and Assessment (RWISA)
- Rwanda National Cervical Cancer Screening and Prevention Program
- International Epidemiology Database to Evaluate AIDS in Rwanda
- Mechanisms of atherosclerosis and CVD in HIV+ women
- International Training in AIDS/TB Prevention Research
