17 Jul The American Academy of HIV Medicine Announces 2025 Dr. Dawn K. Smith HIV Prevention Clinical Fellowship Class
WASHINGTON, DC: The American Academy of HIV Medicine welcomes the second class of the Dr. Dawn K. Smith HIV Prevention Clinical Fellowship. These Fellows demonstrate the passion and dedication to HIV prevention for which Dr. Smith was well-known.
The 2025 class includes:
Jaimee K. Colvin, MSN, APRN, FNP-C
Mallory Deel, MSN, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC
Andrea P. Dunn, PharmD, BCPPS, HIVPCP
Bethany Johnson, PharmD, BCIDP
Anshel Kenkare, MD
Nikita Shaneka Pete, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC
Julia Vermeulen, MSN, CNM-BC, WHNP-BC
“The Academy received a range of excellent applications, which made the selection process highly competitive,” says Angela C. Riley, PharmD, MPH, AAHIVM director of community and provider engagement. “I am looking forward to working with such an outstanding group of clinicians who are dedicated to increasing the awareness of and access to PrEP.”
The Dr. Dawn K. Smith HIV Prevention Clinical Fellowship, funded by a grant through ViiV Healthcare, provides comprehensive HIV prevention training for clinicians from various backgrounds and disciplines. The fellowship is a 12-month clinical program designed to enhance the provision of preventive care education and tools by providers, with emphasis on efforts in communities disproportionately affected by HIV. Fellows will access and review online tools and evidence-based strategies and perform a mix of clinical work, self and collaborative study, teaching, and quality improvement activities. The fellowship will conclude with each Fellow presenting their research/implementation projects at a national conference. Each Fellow and practice organization will receive a stipend to support the development of a PrEP clinic in their own practices.
“I’m excited to welcome our second class of Dr. Dawn K. Smith Fellows, who will work to transform HIV prevention in their respective communities where HIV prevention infrastructure and resources are often very limited or nonexistent,” says Bruce J. Packett, II, Executive Director of AAHIVM. “The Fellowship supports AAHIVM’s strategic plan to increase and diversify the HIV workforce and improve HIV prevention access, and we are so glad to have these clinicians participate in that workforce development.”
The program honors the legacy of Dawn K. Smith, MD, MS, MPH, a champion of health equity and HIV prevention. Dr. Smith was at the forefront of PrEP research, which ensured PrEP use and access. She was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) lead investigator for the first PrEP safety study and she helped develop the CDC’s PrEP guidelines for clinical use. Her research uncovered gaps in PrEP access and use; analyzed racial, ethnic, and economic disparities in the effects of HIV and use of PrEP; and, through mathematical modeling, increased our understanding of PrEP implementation needs. Throughout her career, she worked to eliminate health disparities and ensured that all people had PrEP access. The Dr. Dawn K. Smith HIV Prevention Clinical Fellowship pays tribute to Dr. Smith’s extraordinary contributions to HIV prevention by training a new generation of clinicians in PrEP and HIV prevention.
To learn more about the 2025 Fellows, please visit https://aahivm.org/dks-fellows-2025/
To learn more about the Dr. Dawn K. Smith HIV Prevention Clinical Fellowship, please visit https://aahivm.org/dawn-k-smith-hiv-clinical-fellowship/.