Congratulations Dr. Radix!
With the 30th annual Linda Laubenstein Clinical Excellence Award, the NYSDOH AIDS Institute recognizes a clinician for leadership and unwavering commitment to providing clinical care that has profoundly expanded awareness and access to HIV medicine and prevention in New York State. It is with great pleasure that the AIDS Institute recognizes Dr. Asa Radix as this year’s awardee.
Asa Radix, MD, PhD, FACP, FIDSA, is the Senior Director of Research and Education at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at New York University.
Dr. Radix grew up in Grenada, West Indies, and attended university there before moving to the United States to complete an internal medicine residency and infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Connecticut.
After a decade working in the U.S., with brief interruptions to complete tropical medicine and public health training in the United Kingdom, Dr. Radix returned to the Dutch Caribbean to direct a public health department. While there, they implemented a range of services for people living with HIV, participated in the creation of the first regional antiretroviral guidelines, and served as the clinical lead for the WHO Expanded Program on Immunization and the Pan American Health Organization HIV/STI Technical Advisory Committee.
In 2006, Dr. Radix returned to the U.S. as the associate medical director at Callen-Lorde and continued to provide technical support to the Caribbean, working with organizations such as the Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV/AIDS and multiple NGOs to enhance PrEP uptake and improve access to treatment for people living with HIV.
In 2010, Dr. Radix created a research and education department at Callen-Lorde that prioritizes community-based participatory research and training of healthcare workers in LGBTQ+ health and HIV treatment and prevention. The department currently has a broad research portfolio, including HIV and STI prevention research along with several studies that focus on transgender medicine, such as the LEGACY Project, the first community-based cohort of transgender individuals in the U.S.
Dr. Radix started providing care to transgender and gender diverse people during residency, and this has been an important part of their clinical and research practice ever since. Dr. Radix has contributed to multiple national and international guidelines on transgender health and was co-chair of the recently published World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care version 8 working group.
Dr. Radix contributes to several U.S. HIV guidelines committees, including the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute’s Medical Care Criteria Guideline Committee and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents. An important part of this work has been ensuring that the needs of transgender and gender diverse people are fully included in all guidance related to HIV treatment and care.
Dr. Radix has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, predominately on HIV prevention, LGBTQ+ health, and transgender medicine, and serves as an Associate Editor of Transgender Health and the International Journal of Transgender Health.