Sarah E. Rutstein

Sarah E. Rutstein, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. She is also a Trainee in the Physician Scientist Training Program at UNC. Her work bridges clinical medicine with health services research, focusing on translating evidence-based interventions into practical clinical implementation, particularly in resource-limited settings.

Dr. Rutstein earned her undergraduate degree from Duke University Medical School and completed her medical education, residency, fellowship, and PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This extensive training at UNC has provided her with a strong foundation in both clinical medicine and research methodology.

Her primary research interests focus on HIV prevention, health services research, implementation science, and cost-effectiveness modeling. Dr. Rutstein's work specifically examines how to translate efficacious interventions into clinical implementation in resource-limited settings through behavioral and biomedical clinical trials and sophisticated modeling approaches. She has developed HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention and treatment practices and policies that efficiently prioritize scarce resources, applying models of differentiated service delivery to examine new implementation strategies. Her modeling work includes a diverse collection of decision-analytic and predictive models that have directly informed WHO policies for HIV testing and case finding.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong focus on HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), including studies on initiation, discontinuation, and restarting patterns, as well as the challenges of HIV diagnosis and management in the context of PrEP and acute HIV infection. More recently, her work has expanded to include COVID-19 research, examining viral load dynamics, vaccine efficacy, and risk assessment following infection or vaccination. Her research consistently combines epidemiological methods with implementation science to address real-world public health challenges.

Dr. Rutstein has contributed significantly to global health policy, with her modeling work helping guide WHO recommendations. Her research on HIV prevention and treatment strategies has provided critical evidence for policymakers working to optimize resource allocation in settings with limited healthcare infrastructure.

As a physician-scientist, Dr. Rutstein bridges clinical practice with rigorous research methodology. Her work demonstrates a consistent commitment to improving HIV prevention and treatment strategies through evidence-based approaches that consider both clinical effectiveness and practical implementation challenges, particularly in resource-constrained environments. She is actively engaged in both HIV research and emerging infectious disease work related to the COVID-19 pandemic.