Aima Ahonkhai, MD, MPH

Dr. Ahonkhai is an Infectious Diseases clinician with focused training in HIV medicine, epidemiology, and outcomes research. Dr. Ahonkhai is on faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) where she has joint appointments in the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Institute for Global Health. She is committed to optimizing clinical outcomes for marginalized patients living with HIV, especially adolescents and young adults, and has focused her efforts on mHealth-supported and community-based strategies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Southern US. Dr. Ahonkhai has successfully established collaborations with NGOs in South Africa, Nigeria, and Mozambique to assess barriers to care linkage, retention, and viral suppression. She has collaborated extensively with the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria to launch the Care4Life program, to study individual and health-system level predictors unplanned interruptions from HIV care in Nigeria. This research has informed the development of mHealth-based interventions to improve retention and engagement in care among Nigerian youth. Domestically, Dr. Ahonkhai has collaborated with the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), and the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD), to: 1) highlight disparities among racial, sexual, and gender minorities especially among youth living with HIV, 2) explore individual and community-level drivers of linkage to care, 3) characterize the association between mobility among PLWH and HIV care outcomes, and 4) work with SCHD and other key partners to develop a linkage to care intervention for one of the highest-burdened counties in the country. She is excited to formalize training in implementation science to guide and strengthen her intervention research.