Dr. Denise Jacobson

Title and Affiliation
Epidemiologist & Senior Research Scientist
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Contact: jacobson@sdac.harvard.edu

PHACS Roles
Co-Chair, Nutrition-Growth-Metabolism Working Group

Dr. Denise Jacobson, PhD, MPH is an infectious disease epidemiologist who has been working in the field of HIV for over 20 years. Over the last 12 years, she has been a senior epidemiologist on the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS) and Co-Chair of the Nutrition-Growth-Metabolism Working Group in PHACS since its inception, as well as a member of Cardiopulmonary, Maternal Exposures, and Women’s Cohort working groups. She designs or contributes to the design of proposed studies and performs or supervises analyses. The breadth of her published work in persons living with HIV includes studies on metabolic syndrome, weight loss, lipodystrophy, bone loss, insulin resistance, mitochondrial markers, pulmonary function, dyslipidemia, human papillomavirus, and puberty. In addition, her work includes studies of in-utero antiretroviral (ARV) exposure and maternal nutrition on birth outcomes and child growth in HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU) children in the US and of in-utero ARV exposure on birth outcomes and neural tube defects in HEU children in Botswana. She has previously studied hormonal contraception, cervical ectopy and sexually transmitted infections in adolescent women and antibody levels to the human papillomavirus and to influenza in vaccinated youth in the US. In addition to serving as Co-Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on numerous grants, she is currently a senior epidemiologist for the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network, a member of the Harvard Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Supplemental Core, and Co-chair of the CFAR Adolescence and HIV scientific working group.