As part of her graduate study, Anne Gasasira worked with a research group that helped change the understanding of how HIV affects malaria.
“We hypothesized that people with HIV would be more likely to be infected with malaria,” Anne explains. “But what we found was that people receiving cotrimoxazole were actually protected against malaria.”
Cotrimoxazole, an inexpensive daily antibiotic that’s part of standard treatment for people with HIV, was found to be 95% protective against malaria. HIV-uninfected people were, in fact, more likely to be infected with malaria than those who were HIV-infected and receiving treatment, giving further support for policies ensuring that all people infected with HIV have access to treatment. This work led to Anne’s PhD dissertation, which examined the interactions between HIV and malaria in children in the context of widening access to improved interventions.
Her graduate research convinced Anne that strong data are needed to inform health policies. “I’m more interested in diseases in a wider sense – not just how they manifest in a single patient, but how diseases affect an entire population.”
To best perform this type of research, she realized she needed more training. “After completing my PhD, I returned to Uganda from Berkeley. I saw that international groups were putting large amounts of development assistance for health into sub-Saharan Africa, and researchers were needed to quantitatively evaluate the effect of this aid.”
Anne needed to learn how to perform this higher-level quantitative analysis, and she discovered IHME’s Post-Graduate Fellowship. “IHME was the perfect fit. Research like what’s done here is a relatively new area for Uganda.”
At IHME, Anne is working on the Malaria Control Policy Assessment project, currently underway in Zambia. This project evaluates the impact of malaria interventions and determines how interventions for malaria affect mortality of children under 5 years. She’s also working on the Access, Bottlenecks, Costs, and Equity project, helping to determine the cost effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy in Uganda.
“Policy in some African countries is often developed without having available scientific data on which to base the policy,” Anne says. “Work like what’s done at IHME unblinds policy development. Providing scientific data for decision-making can be extremely powerful, especially if it’s done in a timely manner. Evidence-based policy can save lives and money, and the money saved can be funneled into areas that really need it.”
After her fellowship at IHME, Anne wants to return to sub-Saharan Africa to continue this line of work. “This type of research is needed in my home region. I want to work with governments and funders to provide the best data in order to continuously inform the most useful and cost-effective policies.”
