The Transformative Leader Award recognizes members of the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) who have transformed the field through significant achievement in HIV clinical care, provider education, research or advocacy. The 2024 honoree is Daniel R. Kuritzkes, MD, FIDSA.

 

Kuritzkes, the Harriet Ryan Albee Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, is a trailblazer in advancing knowledge of drug-resistant HIV. He has had a transformative impact on the understanding and care of people with HIV and on countless trainees and colleagues.

 

His most significant contributions include his work to establish the significance of resistant mutations against nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors and his insight that certain drug resistance mutations reduce viral fitness.

 

The inaugural Ada Adimora Citation Award honors the late Ada Adimora, MD, MPH, FIDSA, a past chair of HIVMA. The award recognizes exemplary contributions or service to HIVMA as well as advancing efforts to end HIV as an epidemic. The inaugural award goes to Oni Blackstock, MD, MHS.

 

Blackstock—a primary care and HIV physician, researcher and public health practitioner—has spent her career in the relentless pursuit of equity and justice in health care. She has conducted transformative research and championed policies that prioritize the needs of Black and Latinx people with HIV.

 

As founder and executive director of Health Justice, a consulting firm that helps health care organizations center antiracism and equity in the workplace, she serves as an expert consultant on HIV clinical research projects.

 

The Innovator Award recognizes early or mid-career HIVMA members who have made outstanding and original contributions to HIV medicine in clinical care, provider education, research or advocacy. The 2024 recipient is Onyema Ogbuagu, MD, FACP, FIDSA.

 

Ogbuagu, an associate professor of infectious diseases at Yale School of Medicine, is a prolific researcher who has conducted groundbreaking investigator-initiated clinical trials and other research on HIV and COVID-19.