Brandon Brown, MPH
PhD candidate, GDEC 

Brandon Brown, MPH, is a continuing Global Disease Epidemiology and Control (GDEC) PhD candidate who recently won the Dan David Scholarship—a $15,000 prize that will help him continue his research efforts in Lima, Peru. Brown is currently conducting a study in Peru to test a new HPV vaccine schedule among female sex workers and to test for HPV subtypes in the same population. Beyond the monetary value of the award, Brown was particularly gratified that Dr. Harald zur Hausen—2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine recipient for discovering the link between papillomavirus and cervical cancer—was a member of the scholarship committee.

Brown’s interest in global health was first sparked while conducting research in South Africa and studying abroad in Singapore. In South Africa, he worked as an NIH MIRT Fellow on several projects, including one that looked at issues of blame in HIV infection. 

His ties to Peru go back to his research as an MPH candidate under Tom Coates at UCLA. He also won an International AIDS Research Training Award that allowed him to conduct research there on the potential for HIV prevention activities among sex workers.  

His mentor at Hopkins has been Professor Neal Halsey, who, Brown says, “is directly responsible for my becoming a public health professional.” Under Professor Joanne Katz, he continues to receive funding support through her National Institutes of Health (NICHD) International Maternal and Child Health Training grant. He hopes to graduate in 2011 using his current HPV project as the basis for his dissertation.