Paul Wesson, PhD
Dr. Wesson is an epidemiologist focused on quantifying health disparities among socially marginalized populations. As an HIV researcher, he works on the unique challenges of sampling hard-to-reach populations for HIV surveillance and leverage information from the sampling process to generate estimates of the population size. Valid population size estimates provide a denominator for the population at risk and inform the allocation of limited public health resources. He also uses advanced epidemiologic and statistical techniques to study the social determinants of infectious disease risk. Working at the intersection of infectious disease, data science, and social epidemiology, he incorporates theories and principles from social epidemiology to inform his study designs and analyses.
The science for the last mile: Enhanced epidemiologic surveillance to accelerate HIV elimination
The objective of this NIAID-funded K01 award is to identify the residual drivers of HIV infection in Fast Track cities. Methods from semi-parametric statistical modeling, HIV phylogenetics, and minority stress theory will be used to augment surveillance data.