Kristen Stafford, MPH, PhD

Research summary

Dr. Stafford is an infectious disease epidemiologist with over 30 years of experience in the design, implementation, and evaluation of HIV care and treatment programs. Her research combines large cohort studies with program evaluation to understand how HIV care delivery can be improved and sustained over time, with particular attention to aging and chronic disease among people living with HIV.

She has held sustained leadership roles guiding and implementing the programs that generate this evidence, building research and data infrastructure across Botswana, Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. Her research on the intersection of HIV, non-communicable disease, and aging related conditions is helping to inform more integrated models of care for an aging population living with HIV worldwide.

Research interests

• Differentiated and community-based service delivery
• Epidemiology of aging among people living with HIV
• Global health research capacity building
• Health information systems and surveillance
• HIV care and treatment program evaluation

Research themes

• Aging
• Global public health
• HIV epidemiology
• Non-communicable disease
• Population-based studies

Keywords

• Aging
• Epidemiology
• HIV
• Non-communicable diseases
• Person-centred care
• Surveillance

Dr. Stafford is an associate professor in the College of Community and Global Health, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences and is affiliated with the Institute for Global Public Health. She serves on the Editorial Board of AIDS and was a member of The Lancet HIV Commission on Ageing & HIV.

As an infectious disease epidemiologist whose career has spanned research, program leadership and training in North America and sub-Saharan Africa, she has spent over three decades working on the design, implementation and evaluation of HIV care and treatment programs, with a particular focus on how these programs can be built to generate evidence and deliver care sustainably over time. She works in close collaboration with governments, academic institutions, service providers and community members around the world to ensure her research is contextually relevant and person-centred.

Prior to joining the University of Manitoba, she was an associate professor at the Institute of Human Virology – University of Maryland School of Medicine. There, she served as deputy director of the Center for International Health, Education and Biosecurity, guiding HIV program implementation across eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa. She has led national HIV, surveillance and data infrastructure projects, and her current research examines how HIV prevalence and care needs are shifting as people living with HIV age.

She has a longstanding commitment to teaching and mentoring, including five years as director of Clinical Research Education Programs at the University of Maryland, and continues to mentor students and early-career investigators across the countries where she works.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy in Epidemiology, University of Maryland, Baltimore, United States (2010-2015)

Master of Science in Public Health, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, United States (2003-2004)

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Baltimore, United States (1991-1995)