Monday, April 28, 2025
12pm – 1 pm CT

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Seminar Description

The TC CFAR is hosting a Clinical Sciences Core online seminar featuring Jennifer Jao, MD, and Sahera Dirajlal-Fargo, DO, at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. They will present on the updated Department of Health and Human Services guidelines, “Infant Feeding for Individuals With HIV in the United States.” Jao and Dirajlal-Fargo will review data about perinatal HIV transmission and postnatal HIV transmission (i.e. through breastfeeding), as well as recommendations on counseling about infant feeding options and clinical management of the breastfeeding infant.

About the Presenters

Jennifer Jao, MD, is a professor of Pediatrics and Adult Infectious Diseases at Northwestern and holds the Susan B. DePree Founders’ Board Professorship in Pediatric, Adolescent, and Maternal HIV Infection. Jao is the director of the Section of Pediatric, Adolescent, and Maternal HIV infection at Lurie Children’s. She currently serves as the co-director of the TC CFAR’s Clinical Sciences Core and is the co-chair of the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) Network.

Jao is the multiple-Principal Investigator of several NIH-funded HIV maternal-pediatric cohorts, including the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS) network, the Obesogenic oRigins of maternal and Child metabolic Health Involving Dolutegravir (ORCHID), and the Cape Town Adolescent and Antiretroviral Cohort (CTAAC-Heart). In addition, she is co-chair of the IMPAACT P1115, “Very Early Intensive Treatment of HIV-Infected Infants to Achieve HIV Remission.” Her research interests include maternal child HIV, early life reservoirs, and chronic comorbidities associated with HIV and its treatment across the maternal-fetal intersection and the life course.

Sahera Dirajlal-Fargo, DO, is an associate professor of Pediatrics Infectious Diseases at Northwestern and a physician at Lurie Children’s. She is also a co-director of the TC CFAR’s Slowing Aging Across the Lifespan for Persons with HIV Scientific Working Group (SAIL HIV SWG).

Dirajlal-Fargo is a translational investigator, whose research portfolio focuses on complications of HIV in children and youth in the US and sub-Saharan Africa. She is the Principal Investigator on multiple NIH-funded studies in the US and Africa to better understand the long-term health outcomes and chronic comorbidities associated with HIV in adults and children. Dirajlal-Fargo specializes in providing HIV care and treatment to infants, children, and adolescents both living with, and exposed to, HIV as well as all aspects of pediatric infectious diseases.