Dr. Serena Koenig is an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity and the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  She has been working in Haiti for over 15 years, conducting clinical research and providing care for patients with HIV and/or TB.

Dr. Koenig collaborates closely with the Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (GHESKIO) in Port-au-Prince.  GHESKIO is the largest provider of HIV and TB care in the Americas, and an internationally renowned research center. GHESKIO is part of the AIDS Clinical trials Group (ACTG) network of the NIH. Dr. Koenig serves as a senior advisor in GHESKIO’s Clinical trials Unit, and as co-chair for a multi-country ACTG trial that is comparing two different treatments for isoniazid-resistant TB. She is also the primary investigator for four clinical trials that she is conducting with her GHESKIO colleagues. One of these studies is a clinical trial evaluating two different regimens for second-line antiretroviral therapy (ART), and the other three studies evaluate different strategies for providing optimal care delivery.

Dr. Koenig and her GHESKIO colleagues recently completed a randomized trial which demonstrated that initiating ART on the day of HIV diagnosis improved retention and viral suppression, and reduced mortality. This was one of the key studies that informed the World Health Organization guidelines for rapid ART initiation.  She has authored or co-authored nearly 100 manuscripts and book chapters related to the treatment of HIV and/or TB.  

Dr. Koenig received her MD with Honors from the University of Washington and completed her residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and her infectious disease fellowship at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals.  She completed her Masters in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.