Pat Flynn and Philippa Musoke
Pat Flynn is the domestic vice chair for the IMPAACT Network as of December 2020. She started out as a site investigator for perinatal studies in 1992 and had her first role as study chair in PACTG 381. Dr. Flynn is a member in the Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (SJCRH) where she holds the Arthur Ashe Chair in Pediatric AIDS Research. She is also Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She began working in the HIV/AIDS program at SJCRH in 1988.
Philippa Musoke is the international vice- chair for the IMPAACT Network as of December 2020. She was a member of the IMPAACT Scientific Leadership Group (SLG) during the last grant cycle and started out as a site investigator in 1997. Dr. Musoke is a professor of Paediatrics and Child Health, School of Medicine, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda and the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Makerere University-Johns Hopkins University Research Collaboration (MUJHU), Kampala. Her areas of interest include PMTCT, pediatric HIV treatment for resource limited settings, and childhood TB diagnostics and treatment.
1. What have you enjoyed most about working with the IMPAACT Network?
PF: By all means, working with an incredible community of care providers, facilitators, advocates and families. It takes all to build the village.
PM: I have really enjoyed meeting and networking with investigators and community workers who are passionate about improving the treatment of children living with HIV and adolescents and prevention of pediatric HIV through the conduct of highly relevant research.
2. What are your biggest goals for the Network in the next 7 years?
PF: For me, continuing to make progress in developing new treatments, increasing efficiency and a successful junior investigator mentoring program.
PM: To support investigators from the IMPAACT sites particularly from international sites to be actively involved in developing relevant research concepts and to build capacity of junior investigators.
3. As vice chairs, what do you plan to do first for the Network?
PF: I hope to identify opportunities to streamline and increase efficiency.
PM: I plan to work with the (Network) leadership to build the capacity of international investigators to become IMPAACT scholars and to develop relevant research concepts.
4. What has been the most defining experience so far in your career?
PF: Being in the field so long, I have had the incredible opportunity to move from having no treatment and many patients sick and dying to having so many thrive. Work is not yet done but seeing progress!
PM: I was part of the study team that conducted the landmark HIVNET012, which demonstrated that single dose nevirapine to the mother at the onset of labor and to the infant soon after to delivery reduced mother-to-child HIV transmission by 50%. These results set in motion the implementation of prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission in the developing world including Uganda.
5. What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?
PF: Reading, knitting and I now have two grand-babies, so they have become the focus of the knitting!
PM: I enjoy working in my flower garden.