CAHR Professional Development Awards Highlights

Dr. Julie Lajoie

Dr. Julie Lajoie is an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba. Her research focuses on understanding how hormones and biological sex affect immune response and susceptibility to infectious diseases, especially HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Thanks to the support from a CAHR Professional Development Award, Julie was able to travel to Nairobi, Kenya to attend the Collaborative Annual Meeting on STBBIs and to advance several components of her research program. Funding allowed her to engage directly with community partners, establish new scientific collaborations, and conduct in-person interviews for new trainees joining the Lajoie Lab’s Nairobi team.

CAHR Professional Development Awards are designed to offer support for the next generation of HIV researchers seeking to build their skills in the field of HIV research. Awards are available across CAHR’s four tracks (basic, clinical, social sciences, epidemiology and public health) as well as community-based research.

Without this support, Dr. Lajoie would not have been able to participate in this opportunity and gain hands-on experience working directly with community partners, researchers, and trainees in Nairobi.

“This was the first meeting since the PEPFAR and USAID cuts, which have had a tremendous impact on the fight against HIV and on communities with lived experience and HIV research. It was an important statement that we continue this meeting, come together to discuss research and how we can move forward, and reiterate to communities that we are not letting this go; we are there to continue the fight with them.”

Through this experience, Dr. Lajoie strengthened her research program by establishing two new collaborations: one with Dr. Marianne Mureithi (Kenyan AIDS Vaccine Institute) which focused on microbiome and HPV research, and another with Dr. Ann-Marie Calias (Northwestern University) which focused on menopause and HIV. She also co-hosted a Hot Flashes Workshop with peer-leaders from the Sex Worker Outreach Program (SWOP), where community members discussed menopause, stigma, and aging as women and as female sex workers. Dr. Lajoie additionally conducted in-person interviews and successfully recruited two new MSc students, one PhD student, and one postdoctoral fellow to join her lab in Nairobi.

“The hot flashes session was an amazing workshop. The community had many questions they wanted addressed, such as what the impact of aging is on their susceptibility to HIV, or whether aging changes how the HIV medication affects them. I realized that the taboo, stigma, and lack of knowledge on menopause are very similar to what we observed here in Canada.”

This experience reinforced the need for community-driven research. By empowering women with knowledge about aging and stretching international collaborations, Dr. Lajoie hopes to advance our understanding of HIV, STBBIs, and women’s health across the lifespan.