June 23, 2005|
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June 23, 2005 |
By Amber North He begins July 1. "We, like all colleges, know who the leaders in respective fields are, and we knew his reputation, so when we created the center, he was among the candidates to recruit," said Jill Scoggins, Meharry's spokeswoman. Meharry hired Hildreth because of "his stellar reputation and his absolute commitment to excellence in the research of health disparities in the area of HIV and AIDS," she added. "The work that he's doing, in particular, will be a great advancement to stop the disease not only in this country, but globally." Earlier this month, the medical college was censured, or formally condemned, by the American Association of University Professors, a college professors' advocacy group. The group said in a report that Meharry mistreated faculty and that the administration didn't share its power. But Hildreth, who spent 17 years as a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that moving to Meharry ranks right up with his experiences working for Johns Hopkins and attending Harvard and Oxford. "For me, coming to Meharry is a bit of a dream come true," he said. "I'm looking for exciting things to come." Hildreth, 48, said he plans to bring his team of researchers to Meharry and recruit behavioral scientists to help understand why people exhibit behaviors that put them at risk of the virus. He also intends to conduct research on chemical condoms that could block transmission of HIV during sexual intercourse and develop a vaginal cream that will help prevent activation of the disease. Meharry's new center will focus on the disproportionate impact of HIV and AIDS on certain ethnic groups, particularly African-Americans, school officials said. Recruitment of Hildreth is seen as an important first step toward getting the new program off the ground. "He wanted to come to Meharry as much as we wanted him to come here," Scoggins said. "When the funding was awarded to us to create the center, it was just a perfect match of what we were looking for and what he wants to do personally and professionally." [Sidebar] A distinguished career James Hildreth has been affiliated with several prestigious universities, beginning at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in chemistry in 1979. He then went to Oxford University in England as a Rhodes scholar and got his doctorate in immunology in 1982. Five years later, he earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Hildreth joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins full time after graduation. In 2001, Hildreth was appointed chief of the Division of Research at the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities for the National Institutes of Health, the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research. That same year, he and his research team discovered that cholesterol is active in HIV's ability to penetrate cells and that removing the fatty material from a cell's membrane can block infection.
Hildreth will bring his research team to Meharry when he begins July 1.
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