Alexa Keeshan is a CTN+ Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute under the mentorship and supervision of Dr. Curtis Cooper and Dr. Sahar Saeed. She obtained an undergraduate degree in biochemistry with an option in microbiology and immunology and a minor in economics at the University of Ottawa in 2018. Her doctorate in epidemiology focused on quantifyingthe humoral immunogenicity of COVID-19 vaccines among the general population and key clinical groups, such as the obese or immune compromised. During this time, she also completed multiple studies aimed at improving clinical care of hepatitis B and hepatitis C patients and developed a keen interest in STBBI epidemiology.

In her postdoctoral fellowship, she will characterize the evolving epidemiological profiles of HIV co-infections with hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or syphilis in Canada. Using data from multiple sites across the country, she will determine how transmission dynamics and disease progression for HIV and STBBI co-infections have shifted over the past three decades. Her work will be conducted through a syndemic lens, in which the impact of interactions between individual factors (both clinical and behavioural) and ecological factors (e.g., economic recession, the opioid epidemic, and COVID-19 pandemic) on disease burden among co-infected populations will be investigated. She will determine how populations at increased risk of HIV and STBBI co-infections are shifting and identify early indicators of these changing patterns to inform prevention and treatment efforts.