Our Faculty

As director of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research in the International Center for AIDS Care and treatment Programs (ICAP) at Columbia University?s Mailman School of Public Health, Denis Nash oversees and coordinates research activities for four large Columbia University initiatives related to rapid scale up of antiretroviral therapy programs in 10 sub-Saharan African countries, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic. Dr. Nash?s interests include domestic and international HIV/AIDS epidemiology and surveillance, cancer epidemiology, and health disparities in urban populations. His recent work has focused on the epidemiology of HIV and AIDS, and the implementation of a new citywide laboratory-based surveillance system to track HIV/AIDS in NYC. Dr. Nash has also published recently on West Nile virus and its clinical sequelae among survivors, and the relationship between menopause, blood lead, and hypertension in the NHANES III cohort. Prior to joining the team at Columbia, Dr. Nash was an investigator in the Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies at the New York Academy of Medicine and the director of the HIV/AIDS Case Surveillance Unit at the New York City Department of Health. He also has done extensive work in Nigeria and Botswana on the design and conduct of national surveys to estimate HIV prevalence. Dr. Nash's post-doctoral training included two years in the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stationed at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, during which he received the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary?s Award for Distinguished Service for his role in the 1999 West Nile Virus outbreak response. Dr. Nash is also an adjunct assistant professor and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Course Director at the Mount Sinai Medical School in the Department of Community Medicine.

PhD, University of Maryland at Baltimore, 1999

MPH, Johns Hopkins University, School of Public Health, 1995

BS, Drexel University, 1991

Mailman School Affiliations:

• ICAP  Faculty
• Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiologic Research 

Additional Affiliations:

• Assistant Clinical Professor, Community Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine

• Secretary's Award for Distingushed Service, US Department of Health and Human Services, 1999
• James H. Nagano Citation for an outstanding CDC scientific publication in 2001, National Center for Infectious Diseases, CDC

Selected Editorial Boards

• Editor, Surveillance Section, International Journal of HIV/AIDS Surveillance and Epidemiology

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Dr. Nash?s recent domestic work has focused on the epidemiology of HIV and AIDS, and the implementation of a new citywide laboratory-based surveillance system to track HIV/AIDS in NYC. He has also published recently on West Nile virus and its clinical sequelae among survivors. Following EIS, Dr. Nash was the Director of the HIV/AIDS Case Surveillance Unit at the New York City Department of Health. See: 1. Nash D, Mostashari F, Fine A, et al. for the West Nile Outbreak Response Group. The outbreak of West Nile virus infection in the New York City area in 1999. N Engl J Med. Jun 14 2001;344(24):1807-1814. 2. Labowitz-Klee A, Maldin B, Edwin B, Poshni I, Mostashari F, Fine A; Layton M, and Nash D. Long-term prognosis for clinical West Nile infection. Emerg Infect Dis. 2004; 10:1405-11 3. Nash D, Katyal M, Shah NS. Trends in the predictors of death due to HIV-related causes among persons living with AIDS in New York City: 1993-2001. J Urban Health 2005 (82) 1-17. 4. Nash D, Bennani Y, Ramaswamy C, Torian L. Estimates of HIV incidence among persons testing for HIV using the sensitive/less sensitive EIA, New York City, 2001. JAIDS 2005 May 1;39(1):102-11 5. Nash D, Ramaswamy C, Manning S. Implementation of named HIV reporting in New York City, 2001. MMWR 52: 1248-52 6. Nash D and Elul B. HIV in Cities. 2006 Technology and Society

Cancer screening practices in NYC
Dr. Nash is actively involved, in collaboration with the Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies and the NYCDOHMH, in projects aimed at examining barriers and factors associated with cancer screening among New Yorkers. See: 1. Nash D*, Aziz S, Vlahov D, and Schori M. Evaluation of an intervention to increase screening in an urban public hospital setting. 2006 J Urban Health 2. Thorpe LE, Mostashari F, Hajat A, Nash D, et al. for the Citywide Colon Cancer Control Coaltion. Colon Cancer Screening Practices In New York City, 2003: Results of a Large Random Digit Dialed Telephone Survey. Cancer 2005 Sep 1;104(5):1075-82 3. Vlahov D, Ahern J, Vazquez BS, Johnson S, Philips LA, Mitchell MK, Nash D, Freeman H. Racial Ethnic Differences in Screening for Colon Cancer: Report from the New York Cancer Project. Ethnicity and Disease 2005, Winter;15(1):76-83

Identifying optimal care models for HIV care and treatment in sub-Saharan Africa
HIV care and treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa are expanding rapidly. There are substantial variations in the way these programs deliver services, both within and between countries in Africa, but few insights into which approaches are optimal. Site-level and other contextual factors which may influence the success of HIV care and treatment programs include programmatic components (e.g., adherence and psychosocial support, HIV/TB integration, nutritional support), clinic-level policies and procedures (e.g., process of determining antiretroviral therapy (ART) eligibility, cost-sharing by patients, ART distribution procedures), and site attributes (e.g., number of exam rooms, patient volume and provider-to-patient ratio, urban vs. rural, longevity of program). A small, but growing body of research suggests that differences in patient outcomes (e.g., adherence, treatment response, survival) across HIV care and treatment programs may be in large part driven by differences in these site-level and contextual factors, in addition to patient-level factors. Funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, this project explores how these multi-level factors influence patient outcomes are urgently needed to inform the design of effective HIV care and treatment programs during this scale-up phase.

Countries: Kenya; Mozambique; Rwanda; South Africa; Tanzania

HIV care and treatment operations research
ICAP: Several operations research projects related to further understanding the impact of HIV care and treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa

Countries: Mozambique; Rwanda; South Africa

ICAP: Routine Monitoring and Evaluation of Columbia-supported HIV care and treatment programs
ICAP is currently supporting HIV care and treatment activities in more than 10 sub-Saharan African countries at 85 clinical care sites. The Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research Unit within ICAP is actively involved in analyzing routinely collected data to examine the quality and impact of these programs.

Countries: Cameroon; Ethiopia; Kenya; Lesotho; Mozambique; Nigeria; Rwanda; South Africa; Swaziland; Tanzania; Uganda; Zambia