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Acting Director, Center for Innovation in Global Health & Program Director, Blantyre Prevention Strategy
Dr. Sara M. Allinder is Acting Director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Georgetown University. She has served as Program Director of the Blantyre Prevention Strategy (BPS) since its launch in May 2020 and is co-Principal Investigator for Malawi’s PathToScale Injectable Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) implementation science study.
Dr. Allinder brings more than 25 years’ experience in global health, foreign policy, international development, human rights, and program management to these roles. As Program Director, she has guided more than 6 years of BPS strategic planning, implementation, and learning generation across a consortium of partners in Blantyre District, Malawi, and adaptation of several BPS program elements in Lilongwe District. BPS’s approach to strengthening technical, governance, and coordination capabilities while simultaneously building relationships and feedback loops in Blantyre has been recognized as an innovative model for resilient, sustainable sub-national health systems and HIV prevention programs. Dr. Allinder also supported development of the PathToScale initiative, which launched in September 2023 and has enrolled more than 10,000 individuals onto long-acting injectable cabotegravir (CAB-LA) for HIV PrEP across diverse populations at 36 existing service delivery sites in Blantyre and Lilongwe. She also served on the Product Access Advisory Committee (PAAC) for Maximizing Options to Advance Informed Choice for HIV Prevention (MOSAIC), funded by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) prior to its end in 2025.
Her previous experience includes serving as Senior Fellow and Executive Director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) where she was lead for HIV and supported activities on nutrition, other infectious diseases, global health security, and women’s and family health; more than a decade working on PEPFAR in Washington, DC, as a senior advisor on PEPFAR management, operations, and policy issues and in Uganda as Country Coordinator; as policy adviser in the Office of International Health Affairs, where she led the policy response to the SARS and Avian Flu outbreaks; and as senior editor for Africa of the human rights and international religious freedom reports as a Presidential Management Fellow.
Dr. Allinder has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, research papers, policy briefs, and blogs on global health issues while at CIGH, CSIS, and as an expert advisor to Pharos Global Health Advisors. She also was a frequent host of the Take as Directed and AIDS 2020 podcasts while at CSIS.
Dr. Allinder completed her Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her dissertation developed a potentially generalizable model of a sub-national public health system for HIV prevention and examines systems changes needed for effective HIV prevention at the sub-national level in East and Southern Africa. She also holds a Master of Public Policy, concentration in International Development and Health, and a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Political Science and Sociology, both from The American University, Washington, DC.
Could a Systems Approach be the Disruptor Needed in HIV Prevention?
December 1st, 2020
Business as usual is not working in HIV prevention. The latest UNAIDS data from 2019 demonstrates that we are collectively failing to bring down the number of new infections globally. Despite…
