Dr. Kitahata is Director of the University of Washington (UW) Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research (CE&HSR) Core and the PI of the UW HIV Cohort, a prospective observational study of HIV-infected patients in care at UW, the largest single provider of HIV care in the northwestern US and an HIV/AIDS center of excellence. The CE&HSR Core developed the UW HIV Information System (UWHIS) to integrate comprehensive clinical data on the UW HIV Cohort including demographic, medication, laboratory (e.g. CD4+ T cell count, HIV-1 RNA level, viral resistance), diagnosis, and patient-reported data (e.g. substance use, adherence), linked to biological specimens stored in the UW HIV Specimen Repository to support clinical, epidemiological, behavioral, basic and translational HIV research.

Dr. Kitahata's research focuses on improving HIV outcomes and has elucidated key determinants of increased survival among HIV-infected individuals including early initiation of antiretroviral treatment and physician HIV expertise. She helped establish networks of national and international HIV research collaborations to address critical questions in HIV disease including comparative effectiveness of treatment strategies to improve long-term outcomes.

Dr. Kitahata is the UW PI of the CFAR Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) and directs the CNICS Data Core that developed the CNICS Repository integrating comprehensive data on >30,000 patients from eight CFARs across the U.S. Dr. Kitahata is the UW PI of the North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD) region of the global International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) project and directs the NA-ACCORD Data Core that merges clinical data on >130,000 HIV-infected individuals in care at >200 sites across the US and Canada. These NIH-funded unique research platforms (UWHIS, CNICS and NA-ACCORD) support a wide range of innovative interdisciplinary HIV/AIDS research that potential fellowship candidates may work on, which include examining risk factors and outcomes associated with the increasing incidence of serious HIV-associated co-morbidities such as liver, renal and cardiovascular diseases and malignancies.