WASHINGTON, DC, NOVEMBER 30, 2005 - The American International Health Alliance (AIHA) announced today the appointment of Amanda Gibbons, PhD, MPH, as deputy director of the HIV/AIDS Twinning Center in support of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
AIHA, through a Cooperative Agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the US Department of Health and Human Services, and in collaboration with the International Training and Education Center on HIV (I-TECH) and Futures Group International, has established an "HIV/AIDS Twinning Center" ( www.twinningagainstaids.org) to support twinning and volunteer activities in targeted countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean as part of the implementation of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Dr. Gibbons will assist in shaping and implementing the strategic direction of the HIV/AIDS Twinning Center. She will take the lead in establishing and implementing the Voluntary Healthcare Corps (VHC), an integral component of the Twinning Center.
Prior to joining AIHA, Dr. Amanda Gibbons served as the Director of Operations for Axios Foundation in Tanzania. In this position, she managed the technical teams for HIV care and treatment, voluntary counseling and testing, prevention of mother to child transmission, and orphans and vulnerable children to ensure quality and rapid implementation of innovative programs and methodologies.
Before coming to Axios in September 2004, Dr. Gibbons was the technical advisor for Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS and HIV/AIDS Care and Support in the Office of HIV/AIDS at USAID. In this role, she provided support to USAID's implementation of HIV interventions. She also served as liaison for the Office to MTCT and Care and Support partners at the White House, Department for Health and Human Services, Office of Management and Budget, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization.
Dr. Gibbons earned a PhD in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Her doctoral research focused on maternal behaviors contributing to HIV MTCT. While collecting data for her dissertation, she was the research project coordinator for the Johns Hopkins Research Project in Blantyre, Malawi, where she commenced and coordinated several studies on HIV acquisition and transmission, including a study using microbicides to inhibit heterosexual transmission and studies using short-course antiretroviral prophylaxis to lower MTCT.
Prior to returning to academics for her doctoral degree, Dr. Gibbons worked as a fellow with the National Immunization Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the Kentucky Department for Public Health, she was responsible for training TB nurses throughout the state, providing TB resources to local health departments, and translating for Spanish-speaking TB clients. She began her public health career by joining the Peace Corps in 1993 where she initiated a community nutrition project to combat malnutrition in Nindiri, Nicaragua.
Created in 1992 by a consortium of major healthcare provider associations and professional medical education organizations, AIHA establishes and manages twinning partnerships between health-related institutions in the United States and their counterparts in Africa, Asia, Eurasia, and the Caribbean. Since its inception, AIHA has supported more than 120 partnerships linking dedicated volunteers in the United States with communities, institutions, and individual colleagues overseas in a concerted effort to improve health service delivery in countries with limited resources. Operating under various cooperative agreements and grants from US and international donor agencies including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); the US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA); the World Health Organization (WHO); the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), AIHA, its partnerships, and complementary programs represent one of the US healthcare sector's most coordinated responses to global health issues.
Support for the HIV/AIDS Twinning Center is provided by HRSA, a leading provider of HIV/AIDS care and treatment services to underserved populations in resource-poor settings in the United States and, more recently, throughout the world. For more information about AIHA, visit our Web site at www.aiha.com.
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