Featured Investigators
Deborah Konkle-Parker, PhD, FNP, FAAN
Dr. Konkle-Parker is a professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, as well as in the School of Nursing and the School of Population Health Sciences. She has worked at UMMC since 1996. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nurses since 2014.
Dr. Konkle-Parker has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters related to HIV, and is an active reviewer for multiple HIV- and research-related journals and for conference abstracts. She has been on the editorial board for the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. She has been a long-time faculty for the Mississippi local performance site of the AIDS Education and Training Center, teaching medical personnel about treating individuals living with HIV disease.
Dr. Konkle-Parker is the Principal Investigator (PI) for UMMC cohort, in collaboration with UAB, for the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), which will soon combine with a parallel men’s study to form the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study (CCS). Dr. Konkle-Parker is a member of multiple WIHS/CCS Working Groups, including the Behavioral, Epidemiologic, Aging, and Cardiovascular Working Groups. This important cohort study examines the impact of HIV in women and men living with HIV over decades, collecting data and specimens for population-based and basic science for a wide range of investigators.
She is also the PI for a substance abuse treatment program called Helping HAND (Helping to Advance in New Directions), funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to decrease the rate of transmission of HIV associated with substance abuse. This program takes place in the Infectious Diseases clinic, where patients receive substance abuse treatment within the same walls as their HIV care, in order to help them reduce their viral load and thus reduce the chance of transmission to others. She is also a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT), and trains medical students and mental health professionals on the use of Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral for Treatment (SBIRT) and Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) for substance use.