Kristine Torjesen, M.D., M.P.H., is associate director of Science Facilitation at FHI 360, a global nonprofit human development organization based in Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Torjesen has been associated with the Pittsburgh-based U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded Microbicide Trials Network (MTN) since 2009, first as project director for clinical trial operations for the Leadership and Operations Center (LOC) FHI 360 support core, and beginning in December 2016, as the principal investigator for FHI 360. Thus far, she has overseen the implementation of more than a dozen HIV prevention studies for the MTN, including the network flagship trials, VOICE and ASPIRE.
In addition to her work with the MTN, Dr. Torjesen is principal investigator and project director of the USAID-funded OPTIONS project. In this role, she leads a consortium of international organizations working to expedite and sustain access to new antiretroviral-based HIV prevention products in countries and among populations where they are most needed. In previous years, Dr. Torjesen was co-principal investigator of a USAID-funded health systems and costing ancillary study to the CAPRISA 008 implementation trial of tenofovir gel in South Africa.
Dr. Torjesen is a pediatrician with experience providing pediatric HIV care, general pediatric and adolescent care, as well as experience in improvement science and health systems strengthening. Prior to joining FHI 360, she worked with the Massachusetts Department of Social Services to develop integrated health services for foster children with special needs, with the Lao University of Health Sciences in Laos to establish pediatric and internal medicine residency training programs and as a clinician at Wake Teen Medical Services in Raleigh. Dr. Torjesen also spent two years in Malawi, where she served as a medical officer for the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) clinical research site in Lilongwe, was a clinician in Malawi’s first public pediatric HIV treatment clinic, and worked with Partners In Health to design a new maternity hospital.
Dr. Torjesen received her undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Minnesota and a master’s in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed a residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and a health services research fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital.
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1-December-2016