Researcher profile

Kenneth Mayer

Kenneth Mayer’s clinical research career has focused on the natural history and transmission of HIV in the US and in Asia, having developed some of the very first cohort studies and prevention interventions dealing with the AIDS epidemic. Dr. Mayer published some of the earliest data describing the prevalence of HIV among men who had sex with men in the early 1980’s, and co-authored the first paper showing that antiretroviral drugs suppressed HIV replication in semen. Dr. Mayer was trained in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital (1977-80) and in Infectious Diseases and Molecular Epidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (1980-83). As the founding Medical Research Director of Fenway Health, he created a community health research program that has developed an international reputation for its capability to conduct community-based peer reviewed research. He is currently a Professor at Harvard Medical School and Attending Physician and Director of HIV Prevention Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston. He previously was a Professor of Medicine and Community Health at Brown University. As the Principal Investigator of the Brown-Tufts Fogarty International AIDS Training and Research grant for more than a decade, he has helped develop the research capabilities of almost 100 international investigators, and co-authored some of the first papers describing the natural history of HIV in India. Since 1994, he has been the Principal Investigator of the only NIH-funded HIV Prevention Research Clinical Trials Unit in New England focusing on biobehavioral prevention and chemoprophylaxis. He was the Co-Chair of an NIAID-funded protocol evaluating a community-based prevention intervention for African-American Men who have Sex with Men. He is the co-author of more than 500 peer-reviewed publications, co-authored the first text on AIDS for the general public and has co-edited 5 academic texts. Dr. Mayer has served on the national boards of the HIV Medicine Association, the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. He has received awards recognizing his work from the Governor of Massachusetts, the Rhode Island Medical Society, the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Disease Society of America, and the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He served on the national CDC/HRSA HIV Advisory Board and is currently a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society.