About the Course
MED 10SC
Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with national and international AIDS issues and concepts.
This course focuses on the HIV epidemic, contrasting the origin and spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa and the emergence of HIV in the U.S., in particular the history of HIV in San Francisco and the Bay Area. We will meet the people and visit the institutions which played key roles in the Public Health prevention, care, and treatment of HIV in San Francisco and consider the impact of HIV globally in our thinking about epidemic disease and the international responses to HIV. This will include key locations in the City, including the AIDS Grove, San Francisco General Hospital, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Castro, and local AIDS service organizations. Students will also hear from patients, physicians, and activists who are living with AIDS. We will also meet with scientists at UCSF, Stanford, and local pharmaceutical companies who are at the forefront of new prevention, therapeutic, and diagnostic research. By examining the relationship between the emergence of Gay activism and AIDS in California and New York and the pandemic in Southern Africa, the course will emphasize the multi-disciplinary and multi-sector approach to epidemic infectious disease. How sis physicians, patients, epidemiologists, pharmaceutical companies, and policymakers develop effective responses to the AIDS epidemic ? What are we learning from Africa and what can Africa learn from us about how communities react to deadly threats from infectious disease.
AIDS experts from the Stanford community and Africa are invited to share their perspectives with us. In preparation for the seminar, you will be required to read And the Band Played On and Barnett and Whiteside's AIDS in the Twenty-First Century and selected scientific articles. As part of a group, you will also develop an AIDS-related project of your choice which you will present on the last day of class.
Click to see Professor Katzenstein speak about his course
Instructor Bios
Dr. Katzenstein is a professor of Infectious Disease at Stanford. He encountered HIV in the early 1980’s in the Bay Area as a physician and continued his work in Africa and at the FDA. Dr. Katzenstein was an investigator in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, an academic consortium for trials of antiretroviral therapy.
