Hubert-Yeargan Advisory Committee

Catherine M. Wilfert, MD

Duke University Medical Center

Dr. Wilfert is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School. She is trained in pediatric infectious diseases and has focused on the problems of pediatric HIV/AIDS for the past 20 years. She joined the Infectious Diseases Division at Duke University, where she became Chief of the Division and Professor of Pediatrics and Virology.

Her national leadership roles have included chairing the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), and the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on AIDS. She currently is chair of the Perinatal Working Group of the Prevention Trials Network. In 2000, she served as president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine.

In 1986, her group at Duke was the first to administer zidovudine to a child. Implementation of her concept of interruption of HIV transmission from mother to infant by maternal zidovudine therapy (study ACTG 076) has reduced infant infections by more than 80% in the U.S.

In 1996, Dr. Wilfert took early retirement from Duke to become Scientific Director of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF). In that role, she has become an international leader in implementing programs to interrupt the transmission of HIV from infected mothers to their infants. She has recruited young scholars and helped scientists focus their investigations on HIV/AIDS, with particular attention to the ravages of disease in mothers and infants.

She travels frequently to Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean, where the EGPAF's Call to Action Program has established numerous sites for preventing mother-to-child transmission and for care and treatment.