Jowanna Malone

BA, Harvard College, 2013
MSc, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 2017
PhD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2021

Areas of expertise: Epidemiology; Sociology; HIV prevention and treatment, Health Inequities

Background: 
Dr. Jowanna Malone is a Research Scientist at the Whitman-Walker Institute. Her research interests concern HIV prevention and treatment among racial, sexual, and gender minority groups. She has been involved in said research for over 10 years and has a background in sociology and infectious disease epidemiology. She received her B.A. in sociology with a secondary in Classics from Harvard University and a Master of Science in infectious disease epidemiology from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She then received a Ph.D. in infectious disease epidemiology from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Malone has led research exploring how socioecological challenges on an individual, community, and policy-level influence viral suppression among Black men who have sex with men living with HIV in the United States. This involved leading an analysis using data from the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) 078: Enhancing Recruitment, Linkage to Care and Treatment for HIV-infected Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM) in the United States. In this analysis she assessed whether internalized homophobia and HIV related stigma were associated with the prevalence of viral suppression among a sample of HIV positive MSM. She also used data from the North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD). With these data she assessed if differences in zip code-level racial and economic composition correlated with differences in zip code-level viral suppression prevalence. Additionally, she used these data to assess whether states with Medicaid expansion had a higher prevalence of sustained viral suppression four years following the Affordable Care Act (2014) compared to states that did not expand Medicaid.

Dr. Malone collected, analyzed, and subsequently published on baseline data from the LITE study, a longitudinal cohort study following transgender women across Baltimore, Washington D.C., Miami, Atlanta, and New York to explore factors associated with HIV incidence. She led an analysis among 1,293 transgender women assessing the association between self-perceived HIV risk and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) indication prevalence. She also constructed a PrEP care continuum among those with indications for being PrEP candidates. Additionally, this work included suggestions for making PrEP prescribing CDC guidelines that are specific to transgender women that include noting if patients have previous experiences with sex work, any reported usage of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), sexual acts with a partner of unknown HIV status, and/or reports of needle sharing of injection drugs.

Dr. Malone is currently the site Principal Investigator (PI) on various studies being conducted at Whitman-Walker Institure, including a cohort study following transgender women living with HIV to explore comorbidities that may occur in this population and a PrEP adherence intervention aimed at improving PrEP care engagement among Black and Latino sexual minority men. She is also co-leading a community engagement project to develop an HIV research agenda for Wards 7 and 8 in Washington D.C. Additionally, Dr. Malone is leading a supplement to George Washington University’s DC Cohort Study that aims to explore how mental health impacts HIV treatment outcomes among aging sexual minority men.