Institution: University of Nairobi
Country: Kenya
Professor Ruth Nduati is a paediatrician, epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Nairobi. She has a long-term interest in infectious diseases and currently anchors the Fellowship in Infectious Disease in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health. During the first part of her career, her research focused on the epidemiology of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Specifically, she was the lead investigator in the first and only randomized trial of breastfeeding and formula among HIV-infected ART-naïve women. More than 40 epidemiologic and basic science publications in peer-reviewed journals have arisen from this work.
Prof Nduati was the PI for the Nairobi site in the WHO-coordinated Kesho Bora study that sought to optimize ART for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV. Recently, she has been the country PI for the implementation of pragmatic trials and planning grants to develop practical tools and mentorship approaches to support improved delivery of PMTCT services, including as Kenyan PI for the Systems Analysis and Improvement Approach (SAIA) cluster-randomized trial.
She has received several grants focused on the integration of PMTCT into maternal-child health clinics in Kenya, including the development of training materials and IEC materials, monitoring and evaluation tools, and policy advocacy. Most of the innovations developed through these programs have been adopted and are standards of care. She has served on HIV/AIDS advisory committees internationally and nationally and is the founding member of the Technical Working Group on PMTCT in Kenya. In her faculty position, she has mentored many graduate students in HIV research, and they have gone on to be independent world-renowned researchers in the field of PMTCT. Over the years, Prof Nduati has supervised 5 PhD candidates and advised on 5 PhD dissertations, and supervised 52 postgraduates to completion of their Master of Medicine dissertations or Masters in Public Health thesis. Currently, she is the co-PI for a Fogarty-funded Health-Professional Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI) - Kenya (R25TW011212), intending to create physician-researcher training pathways in the University of Nairobi. For this proposed program renewal, she is prepared to be a core faculty member and successfully use the HEPI platform to support the development of capacity for integrating prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases and HIV care through research training in Kenya.
