Kara K. Wools-Kaloustian earned her B.A. from Hanover College in 1984 and her M.D. from Indiana University (IU) in 1988. She completed her residency at the IU School of Medicine (IUSM) in 2000. She officially joined the IUSM faculty in 2003 as an assistant professor of infectious disease. Since joining, she has held numerous titles and appointments, including serving as the Joe and Sarah Ellen Mamlin Professor of Global Health Research, and more.
Early global health experiences during Wools-Kaloustian’s residency at the IUSM molded her career. She was in the first class to complete rotations at Moi University (Kenya) during the height of the HIV epidemic when the life expectancy for a patient was about a year from diagnosis. Wools-Kaloustian is now the director of research for the IU Center for Global Health and co-director of research (North America) for IU’s 30-plus-year AMPATH partnership in Kenya, where she continues to conduct HIV research and create or improve healthcare systems.
Wools-Kaloustian is passionate about giving people living with HIV a voice and providing healthcare to marginalized populations in underserved areas. Under her guidance, AMPATH has received more than $190 million in research grants. She also has established the National Institutes of Health–funded East Africa IeDEA Consortium, which allows researchers and clinicians to draw upon data from across the region to prevent and treat HIV. Her experience in Kenya working with rural communities confronting HIV has given her special insight into the intricacies of working on similar problems in rural Indiana.
Wools-Kaloustian’s scholarship has focused on HIV in resource-limited settings and has looked at HIV research related to children and adults and mother-to-child transmission. She received support from the World AIDS Foundation to establish an educational program about the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), to better educate healthcare providers and created a lab to diagnose STIs with the assistance of the Health Sciences faculty at Moi University. To cement an environment in Western Kenya that supports the next generation of clinical scientists, she has trained countless medical personnel and junior researchers from IU, Kenya, and beyond. Wools-Kaloustian’s dedication to clinical care, research, and mentorship has helped to change how HIV is treated throughout Africa and the United States.
