Principal Investigators

Principal Investigator

 Professor Marietjie de Villiers

Professor de Villiers is Professor in Family Medicine and Primary Care and Deputy Dean: Education, at the Faculty of Health Sciences of Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Prof de Villiers holds a Master’s degree in Family Medicine, Fellowship of the College of Family Physicians of South Africa and a PhD on the maintenance of competence of rural doctors. Prof de Villiers has extensive experience in medical and health professions education. As chairperson of the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Committee of the Health Professional Council of South Africa she was responsible for the reconfiguration and implementation of the Council’s national CPD system. Prof de Villiers currently leads a number of innovations including the integrated learning of African languages in clinical communication courses; expansion of medical training in rural settings; interprofessional education; interactive communicative technology in teaching and learning; and in-depth research in the effectiveness of medical education initiatives. She is Principal Investigator of the Stellenbosch University Rural Medical Education Partnership (SURMEPI) programme and recipient of the prestigious Institute of Medicine’s Health Professional Education Innovation Collaborative of the Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education. Prof de Villiers serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the African Patient-centered Care Initiative and is the author of a chapter on patient-centered care in the South African Handbook of Family Medicine.

Principal Investigator

Professor Jean Nachega

Prof Jean B. Nachega, MD, PhD, MPH, DTM&H:  Professor Extraordinary, Department of Medicine and Director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases at Stellenbosch Univ. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology (tenure stream) at Pittsburgh University, PA, USA; and he hold an adjunct faculty position as an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA; He received his training in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Tropical Medicine, Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Health Economics in Belgium (Univ. of Louvain), USA (Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University) and UK (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine).  His long-term career goal is to optimize clinical and public health outcomes in HIV-infected adults globally. His research, teaching, and professional activities include planning, design, implementing, and monitoring clinical trials, cohort studies and programs for prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and related opportunistic infections. He conducted a pivotal study establishing a dose-response linear relationship between adherence to Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors-based HIV Therapy and virologic outcomes. In addition, he was the first to quantify the savings in health care cost per month associated with excellent ART adherence, in a large South African HIV cohort. He serves as the Principal Investigator on several research or training grants funded by NIH, PEPFAR, EDCTP, Wellcome Trust and Private Foundations. He is an ad hoc expert member at World Health Organization, HIV Department, Geneva, within the HIV Treatment Guidelines as well as HIV Drug Resistance Working Groups. In 2008, he was elected member of South African Academy of Sciences. As one of SURMEPI Principal Investigators, and in collaboration with the PI, Professor Marietjie DeVilliers, he is responsible of budget oversight as well as regional and international partnerships. He also serves on the SURMEPI management committee and MEPI PI Council.