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Monica Gandhi

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Monica Gandhi
Monica Gandhi in 2021
EducationUniversity of Utah
Harvard Medical School
University of California, San Francisco
University of California, Berkeley
Medical career
InstitutionsUniversity of California, San Francisco

Monica Gandhi is an American physician and professor. She teaches medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is director of the UCSF Gladstone Center for AIDS Research and the medical director of the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86. Her research considers HIV prevalence in women, as well as HIV treatment and prevention. She has been noted as a critic of some aspects of the COVID-19 lockdowns in the US.

Early life and education

Gandhi was born to Indian American immigrant parents. Her father, Om P. Gandhi, was a professor of Electrical Engineering and former department chair at the University of Utah.[1] Her father returned to his home country of India to teach physics after he earned his doctoral degree at the University of Michigan in the 1950s.[2] He returned to the United States in 1967, with his wife Santosh, who would work as a computer scientist at 3M.[2]

Gandhi earned her bachelor's degree in 1991 from the University of Utah.[3] While an undergraduate, she worked in the laboratory of John S. Parkinson, where she studied the flagellar motor switch proteins in Escherichia coli.[3] She earned a medical degree from Harvard Medical School before completing an internship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and, after residency, completed a fellowship at the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies.[4] She earned a Master's in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001, with a focus on epidemiology and biostatistics.[1] She said that she became interested in HIV care after several of her friends came out as gay during high school and struggled with the associated stigma.[1]

Research and career

HIV

Gandhi has studied the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in American women[5] and investigated sex differences in the management of HIV/AIDS.[4] She has studied HIV treatment during pregnancy, with a focus on the safety of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in women with reproductive potential.[6] In 2017, she opened a geriatric clinic at the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86.[7]

COVID-19

Gandhi has criticized certain aspects of COVID-19 lockdowns, especially those imposed in the San Francisco Bay area, for being blunt measures lacking in concern for individual behavioral choices, desire to be with people, and their effect on outpatient care and mental health; she has expressed her concerns in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and other media outlets, but her views go against a majority of domain-experts.[8][9] She has highlighted how lockdowns, compounded with a fear of contracting COVID-19, have excluded those living with HIV from receiving optimum care, leading to preventable fatalities.[10][9]

Gandhi has made statements understating the risk of COVID-19 infection to children: in May 2021 she said children and young adults had only 1 in a million chance of dying. At the time 306 children in the USA had already died from COVID; for Gandhi's statement to be accurate there would have to have been at least four times as many infected children in the country than actually existed.[11]: 315 

Gandhi advocated for a "risk reduction strategy" by conceding that all people cannot inhabit an ideal risk-free environment and hence work to ensure that they wear masks and maintain distancing, and later, get vaccinated.[8][9][12] She has been a consistent advocate against closing of schools throughout the pandemic especially with the availability of effective vaccines.[8][9] In April 2022, she leveraged the same argument to support the end of universal mask mandates, particularly for children.[12] These views have spurred criticism and targeted harassment, much of it on Twitter, both for her pro-mask views, and her views on opening schools and easing lockdowns despite fact based evidence supporting her opinion.[9]

Academic activities

Supported by the National Institutes of Health, Gandhi developed a mentoring program that supports early career investigators from diverse backgrounds.[13][14] She also established a mentoring workshop series for HIV investigators across the United States, Peru, and South Africa.[13] From 2008 to 2015, she directed the Communicable Diseases of Global Health Importance program.[15] In 2019, Gandhi delivered the convocation speech at the University of Utah.[1] She has written for The Conversation.[16]

Personal life

Gandhi was married to Rakesh Mishra, Professor of Medicine at UCSF, until his death in November 2019.[17] They have two children.[17][9]

Awards and honours

Selected publications

  • Gandhi, Monica; Aweeka, Francesca; Greenblatt, Ruth M.; Blaschke, Terrence F. (February 10, 2004). "Sex differences In pharmacokinetics And pharmacodynamics". Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology. 44 (1): 499–523. doi:10.1146/annurev.pharmtox.44.101802.121453. ISSN 0362-1642. PMID 14744256.
  • Feldman, Joseph G.; Minkoff, Howard; Schneider, Michael F.; Gange, Stephen J.; Cohen, Mardge; Watts, D. Heather; Gandhi, Monica; Mocharnuk, Robert S.; Anastos, Kathryn (June 1, 2006). "Association of Cigarette Smoking With HIV Prognosis Among Women in the HAART Era: A Report From the Women's Interagency HIV Study". American Journal of Public Health. 96 (6): 1060–1065. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2005.062745. ISSN 0090-0036. PMC 1470629. PMID 16670229.
  • Gandhi, Monica; Bacchetti, Peter; Miotti, Paolo; Quinn, Thomas C.; Veronese, Fulvia; Greenblatt, Ruth M. (August 1, 2002). "Does Patient Sex Affect Human Immunodeficiency Virus Levels?". Clinical Infectious Diseases. 35 (3): 313–322. doi:10.1086/341249. ISSN 1058-4838. PMID 12115098.
  • Endemic: A Post-Pandemic Playbook, Monica Gandhi, Mayo Clinic Press (July 11, 2023), ASIN: B0BDRS5K7T

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Convocation 2019 | College of Science". science.utah.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  2. ^ a b "The Gandhis, BS'86, 91, 92 | College of Science". science.utah.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c "Our DNA - Spring 2020". Issuu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  4. ^ a b "Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH | UCSF-Gladstone Center for AIDS Research (CFAR)". cfar.ucsf.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  5. ^ "CFAR Seminar: Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH--Novel approaches to measuring adherence in HIV treatment and prevention | Center for AIDS Research". depts.washington.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  6. ^ "Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH: The Unknowns of ART in Pregnancy". ContagionLive. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  7. ^ "New SF General clinic treats older HIV patients". SFChronicle.com. February 3, 2017. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  8. ^ a b c SFGATE, Eric Ting (February 24, 2021). "Stop panicking about the COVID-19 variants, says UCSF's Monica Gandhi". SFGATE. Retrieved April 20, 2022.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Kost, Ryan (October 17, 2021). "Monica Gandhi is S.F.'s outlier COVID expert. Her view on it: 'I'm not saying anything crazy'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  10. ^ Brink, Susan (July 14, 2020). "What Happens When A Pandemic And An Epidemic Collide". NPR.org. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
  11. ^ Howard J (2023). We Want Them Infected: How the failed quest for herd immunity led doctors to embrace the anti-vaccine movement and blinded Americans to the threat of COVID. Redhawk Publications. ISBN 9781959346036.
  12. ^ a b Gandhi, Daniel Halperin, Jeanne Noble, Norman Hearst and Monica (April 19, 2022). "Four COVID experts say it's time to accept reality: 'Vaccines work, masks do not'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved April 20, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ a b c "Clinical Educator Award". www.hivma.org. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  14. ^ Gandhi, Monica; Johnson, Mallory (2016). "Creating More Effective Mentors: Mentoring the Mentor". AIDS and Behavior. 20 Suppl 2: 294–303. doi:10.1007/s10461-016-1364-3. ISSN 1573-3254. PMC 4995126. PMID 27039092.
  15. ^ "Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH | HIV, ID and Global Medicine". hividgm.ucsf.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  16. ^ "Monica Gandhi". The Conversation. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  17. ^ a b "In Memoriam: the passing of UCSF professor Dr. Rakesh Mishra". Department of Medicine. December 5, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  18. ^ "UCSF Office of Medical Education Annual Report: 2011-12". Issuu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  19. ^ Murphy, Paula. "Global Health Sciences Honors Latest Graduating Class and Retiring Director". Global Health Sciences Honors Latest Graduating Class and Retiring Director | UC San Francisco. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  20. ^ "HIV Medicine Association Honors UCSF HIV Clinic Medical Director Monica Gandhi". India West. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  21. ^ "Academic Senate Faculty Award Recipients and Archive | UCSF Academic Senate". senate.ucsf.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  22. ^ ""Resilience": An Interview with Monica Gandhi – AIDS 2020". Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  23. ^ "AIDS 2020: UCSF Experts to Speak, Present at International Conference". AIDS 2020: UCSF Experts to Speak, Present at International Conference | UC San Francisco. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  24. ^ Liggins, Greg (June 14, 2021). "San Mateo County gears up to celebrate state's reopening". KTVU FOX 2. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
  25. ^ "Department of Medicine Newsletter - July 2021". d19cgyi5s8w5eh.cloudfront.net. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
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