William Cunningham

Biography

William E. Cunningham, MD, MPH (PI) - AB, Brown University; MD, UC San Francisco; MPH in Epidemiology, UCLA - is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA. He is Board certified in Geriatrics and Internal Medicine, and was trained in health services research through the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at UCLA. He is a leading investigator in racial and ethnic disparities in care, barriers to care, and health outcomes , particularly for underserved populations with HIV. He also co-led the research team investigating access to medical care and racial/ethnic disparities in the national HIV Costs and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS), a prospective cohort study of a nationally representative probability sample of 2,864 HIV-infected adults receiving care for HIV in the contiguous United States. He led a HRSA-funded Special Project of National Significance (SPNS) intervention study designed to improve access to care for vulnerable persons with HIV infection and is now leading the evaluation of another HRSA-funded SPNS Health Information Technology intervention study designed to improve HIV care. He is PI of an NIMH-funded study of barriers to future HIV prevention technologies. He is PI of an American Heart Association randomized multi-level intervention to prevent recurrent strokeamong patients in 4 large county hospital is Los Angeles.

Research Interest

Dr. Cunningham has authored more than 100 scientific papers many of which address access to HIV care, barriers to medical care, use of HIV services, racial disparities, HIV prevention, and health outcomes for persons with HIV/AIDS. He is Director of the Investigator Development Core of the NIA-funded Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) Center for Health Improvement for Minority Elderly (CHIME), Director of the Training Core for the NCMHD-funded Project EXPORT, and an Associate Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at UCLA. Dr. Cunningham teaches courses on health services organization, and outcomes and effectiveness research. In 2004, Dr. Cunningham was elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation.