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Thomas j coates the architecture of global health
Thomas J. Coates, PhD, (born 1945) is Director of the UCLA Center for World Health., a joint initiative of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and UCLA Health, which promotes the advancement of global medicine. He is Co-Director of the multi-campus University of California Global Health Institute, established to improve health and reduce the burden of disease throughout the world. He has conducted extensive research in the realm of HIV and is the Michael and Sue Steinberg Endowed Professor of Global AIDS Research within the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCLA and Distinguished Professor of Medicine. Health-related behavior is of particular interest to Coates. Throughout his career as a health expert, his theory-based research has been focused on interventions aimed at reducing risks and threats to health
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Education
Coates studied at San Luis Rey College and obtained his BA in Philosophy in 1968. He attended San Jose State University from 1968 to 1971, receiving his Master's in Psychology. He also completed his PhD in Counseling Psychology at Stanford University in 1977.
Career
Coates joined the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with a joint appointment in the Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1979 and served on the Faculty at Johns Hopkins until 1982.
In 1982, the University of California San Francisco, School of Medicine appointed him faculty of the Department of Medicine, Division of Primary Care Internal Medicine.
In 1986, during the height of the HIV epidemic and fueled by his passion for infectious disease research, Coates co-founded the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UCSF, directing it from 1991 to 2003. In 1996, coordinating and integrating all of UCSF's AIDS research activities under an umbrella of 60 programs and laboratories, Coates founded the AIDS Research Institute, and was its Executive Director until 2003. As a leading behavioral scientist, Coates made great strides in behavioral research in HIV primary and secondary prevention both domestically and globally and conducted HIV research on three continents. With funding from USAID and WHO, Coates led a randomized control trial to determine the efficacy of HIV voluntary counseling and testing in Kenya, Trinidad, and Tanzania. As the principal investigator for Project Accept (HPTN 043), Coates led a study on the effect of community-based voluntary counseling and testing on HIV incidence in a cluster-randomized trial in 48 communities at five sites in South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Thailand. He also led a prevention clinical trial in South America. In 2000, he was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine.
Coates' studies on the pivotal role of behavioral science in combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been a catalyst for social change. In 2013, Coates received the Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award in appreciation of his pioneering HIV-related research and to honor his contributions to public health.
Aside from HIV prevention, Coates' areas of emphasis are centered on global health and international health policy.