Dr Sherika Hanley is a specialist family physician and lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She has over ten years of experience as site principal and co-investigator in several US National Institutes of Health-funded multinational HIV treatment and prevention of mother-to-child transmission clinical trials, many of which have informed regulatory approvals and regulatory submissions for the use of antiretrovirals, including dolutegravir in children and pregnancy and long-acting injectables in adolescents.
Dr Hanley was the site PI of the US PEPFAR-funded PROMOTE observational study conducted across four African countries, which assessed long-term outcomes in women with HIV and their HIV-exposed and uninfected children. Her PhD in Medicine (UKZN) was a sub-study of the PROMOTE study which aimed to evaluate the screening and prevention measures of cardiovascular disease in women with HIV from low- and middle-income settings. Her PhD was supported by the Developing Research Innovation, Localisation, and Leadership in South Africa (DRILL UKZN) research fellowship funded by the National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Centre (2017-2023) and the South African National Research Foundation Thuthuka Programme (2019-2021).
Her goal is to leverage her prior research, training and experience to establish herself as a leader and resource in the field of chronic multi-morbidity, in particular HIV and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), in resource-limited settings. She hopes to expand her clinical research expertise to include implementation science- to bridge the policy and research-implementation gaps, and to address important research questions regarding person-centered health service delivery for people living with chronic multi-morbidity.