A Face of Innovative health research
What makes our community special? It’s the people. People whose passion for their roles at work, in their volunteer lives, and in their homes stands out. They make up the unique color and character of life in Morgantown. Here we share a few stories behind the faces of people who make our community a better place.
Dr. Sally Hodder’s early career followed the AIDS epidemic. As an internal medicine intern in San Francisco in 1980, she worked with patients who had AIDS even before it was identified. Doing research in Kenya, she saw HIV emerge in Africa. Later, as a member of the infectious diseases faculty at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, she observed firsthand the life-saving impact of highly active antiretroviral therapy. Hodder headed up clinical trials for better HIV treatments at Bristol Myers Squibb in the early 2000s and later established a program in Newark, New Jersey, to work with highly at-risk populations nationwide.
So she was unsure when she was recruited in 2014 to lead the West Virginia Clinical
and Translational Science Institute (WVCTSI) at the WVU Health Sciences Center. But the position appealed to her, in part because she grew up in a similar area in rural Ohio. The move, it turns out, has been enormously fulfilling.
WVCTSI’s mission is to build clinical research infrastructure that improves health outcomes in West Virginia, Hodder says. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, daily data analyses provided by the WVCTSI identified county-level new infection trends. WVCTSI also supplied funding and testing assistance to clinics across the state. The Institute’s work with primary care clinics through West Virginia Project ECHO has made it possible for many chronic hepatitis C patients to be cured rather than left at risk for cirrhosis or liver cancer. And by enabling clinics to photograph the retinas of diabetic patients, it contributed to the prevention of blindness in many.
Rural patients are underrepresented in clinical trials that bring emerging treatments to the sickest patients, Hodder says. But having seen experimental drugs save AIDS patients’ lives, she’s passionate about changing that. “You have that burned into your brain, about the potential positive impact clinical trials can have—and then you find that, in places like where you grew up, people don’t have that opportunity. That’s wrong.”
She’s particularly excited about WVCTSI’s new 40-foot mobile clinical trials unit. “It has two exam rooms and a lab area and will bring clinical trials to even the most rural communities,” she says. “We’re really looking forward to getting it on the road over the coming months.”
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