People of the U: Jose Lucar Lloveras
Published on Friday, February 28, 2020
By: Kate Royals
Dr. Jose Lucar Lloveras, medical director of the Outpatient Antimicrobial Service, was volunteering in a hospital as a high school student in Lima, Peru, when he formed a friendship with a patient there. The experience with the patient, who was dying of AIDS, would help determine what he did the rest of his life.
The experience stuck with him forever, he said.
“Those were certainly different times as there were very limited management options, and more so in a developing country,” Lucar, an assistant professor in the School of Medicine and the Division of Infectious Diseases, said. “Since then, I always knew that HIV medicine would be a major focus of my career.”
Lucar now works as an outpatient physician with the Ryan White program-funded HIV clinic at the Jackson Medical Mall, where he sees both people with newly diagnosed HIV infections and those who come for long-term follow-ups. He also sees patients who are admitted in the hospital with the Medical Center’s infectious diseases inpatient consult team.
The team there focuses on multiple aspects of the patient’s health, including both physical and mental wellness, and making sure patients have the resources to access HIV treatments.
“It is incredibly encouraging and motivating to see people who become optimistic that they can live a life hopefully as long and healthy as they would without HIV infection,” Lucar said. “It remains, however, a very difficult diagnosis to receive given the stigma related to HIV that has persisted over time.”
He also participates in HIV-related continuing education with the Mississippi AIDS Education and Training Center, as well as with medical students, residents and fellows at UMMC. He is also involved in research about HIV and sexually transmitted infections.
As medical director of the Outpatient Antimicrobial Service, he oversees patients who require long-term intravenous antibiotics after being discharged from the hospital.
“Dr. Lucar is a caring and detailed-oriented physician and we work together as a team well,” Dr. Colleen Cannon, nurse practitioner in infectious diseases, said of Lucar. “He sees the whole picture when treating his patients, and he is compassionate.”
When he’s not seeing patients, doing research or working with antimicrobial services, he’s usually spending time with his family, including his wife and 1-year-old daughter, watching and playing soccer with friends, or taking a road trip.
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