About carey

Dr. Carey Farquhar is a scientist and medical doctor who works for the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health as a teacher and researcher. Carey grew up in Maryland and for most of her childhood wanted to be a veterinarian. By high school, she had moved on to wanting to be a doctor so she could help people. Her parents had moved her and her siblings to France, just outside of Paris, and Carey thought that maybe she would move to French West Africa and provide medical care. When she was in college, her grandfather told her that she would make a bigger impact on people's’ lives by going into medical research rather than becoming a doctor. Carey ended up doing both--she went to medical school and now heads many research projects!

What does Carey study?

Carey’s research focuses on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and she approaches her research through a public health lens. Many of her projects focus on both medical and social aspects of HIV/AIDS prevention and transmission such as diagnosis, testing services, services that help notify the sexual partners of people who have tested HIV positive, and access to treatment among intravenous drug users. HIV is transmitted through contact between body fluids and mucous membranes or damaged tissues. This can happen in a variety of ways--the most common ways that HIV is transmitted is through sexual behaviors and needle or syringe use. Less commonly, HIV can be transmitted from an HIV positive mother to her child during pregnancy, birth, or breast feeding.

In her spare time, Carey loves to trail run. It's taken her to some very beautiful places!

What does she love about her job?

"I love the variety and I love feeling that I can make a difference in people’s lives by doing what I do. My work allows me to help people in all kinds of different ways, whether it’s through my research, teaching, mentoring or clinical practice. I am also fortunate that I get to work with people from all over the world, talk to people who come from backgrounds so different from my own, and interact with smart students and my amazing colleagues every day. My job is so interesting and fulfilling because of that too."

When a child contracts HIV from their mother, the virus needs to be managed for their entire lives. One of the ways to do this is with antiretroviral therapy (ART), which involves taking drugs to slow the rate at which the virus makes copies of itself in the body. A child can only begin ART once they are diagnosed, and unfortunately many children are not diagnosed early in life. One of the challenges this poses is for vaccinations against other diseases. A successful vaccination requires that the immune system attack the vaccine (which usually includes part of the virus--enough for the body to recognize as a threat) and “learn” it so that it can fight the virus next time it sees it. However, if the HIV is not under control and the immune system is busy fighting the HIV virus, the immune cells don’t have the time to commit to learning the virus in the vaccine, and won’t produce prolonged protection.

This is particularly problematic in regions where measles is still a prominent public health problem. Many HIV positive children who receive a measles vaccine (up to 75%!) don’t actually get lasting protection from the measles virus. Even if they start ART to restore their immune system after their measles vaccination, it’s often not enough to get a full immune response to measles. Measles is very infectious, and to fully control it, 95% of the population needs to be immune. With a portion of the population, HIV positive children, not responding to the vaccine, it is very difficult to control. A few years ago, Carey led an investigation that focused on this issue. They studied a group of HIV positive children on ART in Kenya, and found that if they gave them an additional measles vaccine, it improved their protection. Fifty-four percent of the children in the study had measles protection at the start of the study, and one month after the re-vaccination 98% of them had protection. While the protection rate went down over time (significantly in some of the children), it was better sustained in children whose HIV was being successfully suppressed by ART. This study’s results will help health organizations and the governments in these regions manage measles. The World Health Organization is aiming to eliminate measles in 5 regions by 2020, and addressing the HIV positive population is a very important step.