Natasha Martin
Dr. Natasha Martin is an infectious disease economic modeler who develops dynamic transmission models to evaluate the impact and cost-effectiveness of public health interventions. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego and holds an honorary senior lecturer position at the University of Bristol. She is also the co-director of the Biostatistics and Modeling Core of the University of California San Diego Center for AIDS Research (UCSD CFAR). She has worked for 18 years developing mathematical models of disease progression and transmission in both communicable and non-communicable diseases. For the past eight years, her primary research has focused on modeling hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV transmission and prevention among high-risk groups such as people who inject drugs (PWID), men who have sex with men, and female sex workers. She is a leading researcher on modeling the impact of HCV treatment as prevention. Additionally, she has experience developing dynamic cost-effectiveness evaluations of case-finding and prevention interventions, and has the only published cost-effectiveness models of HCV case-finding interventions and treatment including both individual and population benefits. She is the principal investigator (PI) of a NIAID/NIDA-funded R01 optimizing HIV and HCV prevention portfolios among people who inject drugs in 108 countries. Her modeling work informed the WHO guidelines “When to start ART in people living with HIV (2013)”, and her work on the impact and cost-effectiveness of HCV treatment among people who inject drugs informed the WHO guidelines on “Hepatitis C testing, care, and treatment (2013)”. More recently, her modeling work on HCV elimination was used to inform the WHO “Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis 2016-2021”.