| Zena Stein is Professor (Emerita) of Public Health
(Epidemiology) and Psychiatry at Columbia University and Co-Director, HIV
Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, New York State Psychiatric
Institute. She received her medical degree in 1950, from the University of
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She began her career in
community health and primary health care in Alexandra, a township for
Africans, then followed nearly a decade at Manchester University, working on
epidemiological and family and cultural studies of mental retardation, child
development, and psychiatric disorders. Since coming to New York in the mid
1960's, she has occupied her present academic and research positions at
Columbia University.
Her research into mental retardation and developmental
disabilities led to the large-scale studies of the effects of prenatal
undernutrition on subsequent development in studies of the aftermath of the
Dutch Famine of 1944/5 and in Central Harlem. In the same general area, she
also initiated extensive epidemiological studies of miscarriage, preterm
delivery, and malformations. Most recently, because of her deep concern with
the HIV epidemic, she began to study prenatal and perinatal HIV infection
and HIV infection in women. Since 1987, she has been co-director of the
NIMH-funded HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York
State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Here
she has major responsibilities for the problems of women and their
pregnancies, in the U.S. and internationally. Her 270 papers and 5 books
range over many social and epidemiological themes. She is often called to
consult and lecture nationally and internationally, and has carried out
several WHO consultancies. She has served on the Editorial Boards of
professional journals, in the fields of epidemiology, public health, genetic
epidemiology and teratology. She is Editor of the International Section, in
the volume on Women's Health, Academic Press, 2000 and with Quarraisha
Abdool Jarim wrote the chapter on Women and HIV/AIDS: a global perspective.
Dr. Stein is widely recognized as a pioneer in the movement to
provide women with methods of protection that they might use in heterosexual
relationships. Recognizing that in sexual encounters the male condom will
often not be available as a device in women's control, she has argued widely
for developing and testing microbicides, physical barriers (especially the
female condom) and behavioral strategies for women that confer "empowerment"
in sexual encounters. She has urged studies of a hierarchy of strategies, so
that women would be equipped to use what would confer the maximal level of
protection, whatever the circumstance.
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She has explored the need for a
microbicide and various physical barriers that may be used without
necessarily exposing to discovery by her partner. At the same time, she has
encouraged research on protection from HIV that might yet permit women to
conceive when they feel the necessity to do so. Most recently, she has
written on the need, in the US and South Africa, for family planning centers
to communicate to their clients, the need for dual protection. On all these
issues, Dr. Stein has initiated, or collaborated, or advised researchers, in
the conduct of research studies to forward understanding of these issues.
Dr. Stein has, in turn, initiated and been Principal
Investigator of three NIH Training Programs: The Epidemiology of Mental
Retardation (NICHD, 15 years), Behavioral Science Research in HIV Infection
(NIMH, 10 years) and International Training Program in Research and Training
in the Epidemiology of AIDS/HIV (NIH, Fogarty International Center, 7
years), which recently expanded to include training and research in
tuberculosis.
Dr. Stein has been the recipient of many prestigious awards. In
1988 she was selected to be a Visiting Professor, National Institute of
Mental Health, Lima, Peru. In 1992 she received the the Wade Hampton Frost
award of the APHA. The University of Witwatersrand Medical School,
Johannesburg, South Africa, awarded her the the Doctor of Science in
Medicine (honoris causa) in 1993 and the 75th Jubilee Medal in 1997. She has
been elected to senior membership of the Institute of Medicine in 1998
received the John Snow award, APHA in 1999. Dr. Stein was slected Honorary
Professor, Escuela Nacional de Sanidad (the National School of Public Health
of Spain), Madrid, Spain in 1999. She was the invited lecturer and recipient
of the Thomas Francis, Jr. medal from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
in 2000.
In 1999, she served with Mervyn Susser as scientific director of
the Africa Center for Population and Reproductive Research, unique in
Africa, funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, and situated in a rural site in
Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. She has participated in the South Africa HIVNET
grant (PI Dr. Salim S. Abdool Karim) and again joined in Dr. Karim's
successful application for membership in the NIH Prevention Trial Network.
Beginning in 2000, she has held a Core Scientist title with the Sequella
Global Tuberculosis Foundation's Core Scientist Program of the TB Vaccine
Collaboration.
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