In San Francisco, young people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men and inject drugs, and transgender women are three subgroups of people who bear a very high burden of hepatitis C. Beginning in 2019, to better understand the hepatitis C epidemiology and current needs of these three subgroups, Dr. Meghan Morris from the University of California San Francisco led a two-year project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in partnership with researchers from the University of Bristol and co-Investigator Dr. Shelley Facente.
Dr. Facente managed the synthesis of the research data and calculations of “cascades of care” for each subgroup. She also helped coordinate the study’s collaboration with the Bristol team, which led the transmission modeling aim of the study. In addition, Dr. Facente planned and facilitated a pair of “consensus meetings” for community members and other stakeholders in San Francisco to hear preliminary findings from the study and provide insights to help with interpretation and fine-tuning.