Biography
Dr. Kimberly Page, Ph.D., MPH is an infectious disease epidemiologist with significant experience conducting prospective cohort studies, clinical trials, and implementation science research. She completed her BA at University of California Santa Barbara in Fine Arts, and received her MS from North Texas University in Exercise Physiology. Both her MPH and PhD are from the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health. Following her PhD, she did a Post-doctoral Fellowship at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). She was a faculty member at UCSF for twenty years before relocating home to New Mexico and joining the faculty in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Preventive Medicine, in 2014
Personal Statement
I am a public health scientist focused on infectious disease epidemiology. My research has principally focused on epidemiological and clinical studies of HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections in high-risk and underserved populations, especially people who use drugs. I lead and conduct collaborative, high impact research in New Mexico, the U.S., and internationally with high-risk vulnerable groups that may be medically underserved, experience social stigma, and associated social exclusion. These include: people who inject drugs, sex workers, incarcerated populations, low income men and women, and men who have sex with men. My research is transdisciplinary and translational studies with an aim toward prevention of these and other bloodborne infections and impacting public health, including prospective observational, implementation and intervention research, including clinical trials I take great pride in the transdisciplinary nature of the work I lead, which includes a diverse and brilliant group of collaborators including clinicians, behavioral and social scientists, mathematical modelers, public health specialists, and scientists in the fields of immunology and virology. I have been especially fortunate to also have committed research staff teams.
In concert with my longstanding work in the field with people with substance use disorder, I have become increasingly involved in research related to opioid use disorder (OUD) and the current opioid crisis in the U.S. I am the Principal Investigator (PI) of NIDA funded National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network node based at UNM HSC. The Southwest Clinical Trials Node ( SW CTN). The SW CTN is one of 16 centers in the U.S. that aims to cooperatively develop, validate, refine, and deliver new treatment options to patients with at risk of or with substance use disorders with teams of researchers, medical and specialty treatment providers, communities and participating patients. The UNM team includes faculty and personnel from multiple Departments at UNM HSC (Internal Medicine, Family and Community Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine) and from UNM Central Campus (Psychology and Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions). The SW CTN participates in creating and conducting studies of behavioral, pharmacological, and integrated behavioral and pharmacological treatment interventions of therapeutic effect in rigorous, multisite clinical trials to determine effectiveness across a broad range of community-based treatment settings and diversified patient populations; and ensuring dissemination of research results to physicians, clinicians, providers, and patients. We work with clinical sites across the state of New Mexico and recently had Arizona State University join the SW CTN. I am the UNM Site PI for two NIH HEAL Funded studies with Rand Corporation and UCLA, respectively, to test the Collaborative Care Model in people with opioid use disorder in various settings. These studies will be conducted in various communities and practices across New Mexico. I also lead the UNM CTSC Opioid-Use Populations With Integration, Outreach, Informatics, And Drug Discovery (OPIOIDD) Function funded in 2019.
I have conducted and continue to lead highly impactful and lead some of the most significant and successful research on HCV infection in the U.S. and internationally. The prospective observational study known as the UFO Study, which ended only recently (December 2019) is the only prospective cohort study of young adult people who inject drugs in the U.S. The study has produced an expansive knowledge base on HCV, as well as other blood-borne infections and health outcomes in this population. The UFO Study has informed HCV epidemiology, including: incidence and risk factors for HCV seroconversion, HIV epidemiology, mortality, drug-related overdose, gender-related risk, and trends in drug use. including the now recognized increase in opiate pill use. We published the first study in the U.S. showing that opiate agonist treatment reduced HCV incidence by 60% in young adult injection drug users (Tsui et al, JAMA IM 2014). HCV is highly infectious and incidence rates in the U.S have increased tremendously in the past 5 years; thus prevention is essential. This paper was cited by the American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement: “Medication-Assisted Treatment of Adolescents with Opioid Use Disorders” in 2015. My long-term work with this population and with HCV infection was significant in my becoming a co-PI on the only preventive HCV vaccine trial ever conducted. I opened the San Francisco clinical trial site for this trial, and another site in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Results of this trial have been accepted for publication at the New England Journal of Medicine.
I am also leading new studies of HCV and HIV in New Mexico in response to emerging epidemics (of increasing heroin, methamphetamine, and synthetic opioid use) in rural and suburban areas being seen nationwide. We have a paper in press at Drug and Alcohol Dependence showing high prevalence of HCV infection in association with polysubstance use. I work closely with community and harm reduction agencies in this state. Globally, I have assembled a large consortium of researchers leading other studies of incident HIV and HCV to form a collaborative (InC3) with merged data from multiple geographic locations leading to the largest database on HCV and HIV in injectors globally. Our research with InC3 has been especially impactful. Our paper showing that women have higher incidence of HCV was noted in 2017 ID Week conference publication, Clinical Edge as one of the “top 5 must-reads” in hepatology. A paper from UNM on the HCV care cascade in pregnant women was highly publicized and as result, I was asked to lead a national Webinar on HCV in pregnant women for the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable in December 2017. The paper was featured in the NIDA Directors Report in February 2018. I have co-led the New Mexico HCV Elimination group, which includes multiple stakeholders and sectors including the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH), the NM Corrections Department, Albuquerque Area Southwest Tribal Epidemiology Center (AASTEC), Tri-Core laboratories, and community partners. As Co-Chair of the strategic planning committee.
The primary site for my HIV-related research is abroad. I am currently working with the Federal University of Bahia, in Salvador, Brazil on a ten-site observational study of the rollout of Dolutegravir for first-line HIV treatment across the country. My group at UNM - the Statistics and Data Coordinating Center (SDDC) is managing data collection and analyses for study. I completed implementation of a large multi-level HIV and amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS) prevention “implementation science” project in 10 provinces in Cambodia. The paper showing the very positive results of this trial was published (Jan 2019) in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Areas of Specialty
Epidemiology
Biostatistics
Infectious Disease
Substance use disorder
Languages
- English
- Spanish
- Portuguese
Research and Scholarship
1. Page K, Melia, MT, Veenhuis, RT, Winter M, Rousseau KE, Massaccesi G, Osburn WO, Forman M, Thomas E, Thornton K, Wagner K, Vassilev, V, Lin L, Lum PH, Giudice, LC, Stein E, Asher A, Chang, S, Deal C, Gorman, R, Ghany MG, Liang TJ, Wierzbicki MR., Scarselli E, Nicosia A, Folgori A, Capone S, Cox AL. Efficacy Trial of a Vaccine Regimen to Prevent Chronic HCV Infection. Under editorial review with revisions: New England Journal of Medicine.
2. Boon D*, Bruce V, Patel EU, Quinn J, Srikrishman AK, Shanmugam S, Iqbal S, Balakrishnan P, Thomas DL, Quinn TC, Cox AL, Page K, Solomon SS, Mehta SH, Laeyendecker O. Multi-cohort evaluation of hepatitis C antibody avidity-based approach to estimate population-level incidence. J Viral Hepatology. 2020; Epub 30 March 2020.; 73(2), 294-302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhep.2020.03.028
3. Major M, Gutfraind A, Cui Q, Shekhtman L, Kachko A, Cotler SJ, Hajarizadeh B, Sacks-Davis R, Page K, Boodram B, Dahari H. Modeling of patient virus titers suggests that availability of a vaccine could reduce hepatitis C virus transmission among injecting drug users. Science & Translational Medicine 2018; e-pub 11 July 2018. PMCID: PMC6552668.
4. Leyva Y, Page K, Shiboski S, Hahn J, Evans J, Erhardt E. Per-contact infectivity of HCV infection and reinfection in association with receptive needle sharing exposure in a prospective cohort of young injection drug users in San Francisco, California. Open Forum of Infectious Diseases 2020 Epub 16 March. https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofaa092. PMCID: PMC7162618
5. Hahn JA, Tully DC, Evans JL, Morris MD, Briceno A, Bean DJ, Allen TM, Page K. Role of HCV viremia in corroborated HCV transmission events within young adult injecting partnerships. Open Forum Infectious Diseases. Volume 6, Issue 4, 30 April 2019; https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofz125. PMCID: PMC6483127.