Professor
West Virginia University School of Medicine
Morgantown, WV, United States
Kass Lecture bio- Judith Feinberg, MD
Judith Feinberg, MD, FACP, FIDSA, is Professor of both Behavioral Medicine & Psychiatry and Professor of Medicine/Infectious Diseases at the West Virginia University (WVU) School of Medicine and was also the inaugural E.B. Flink Vice Chair of Medicine for Research at WVU from 2018–2024. She started her ID fellowship at UCLA in June, 1982 and walked into an epidemic that was gathering steam. In those very early years, what physicians could offer patients admitted with what was then called Gay-Related Infectious Disease (GRID) was limited to a few antimicrobials for the most common opportunistic infections. Caring for these terribly sick young men meant a lot of old-fashioned doctoring: relieving pain, providing a shoulder to cry on, dealing with parents who had just learned that the fact that their son had AIDS was their discovery that he was gay. At the start of her fellowship, she didn’t know what aspect of ID she would focus on, but her experience of the AIDS epidemic soon settled that issue.
In 1986, Dr. Feinberg was recruited to the new NIAID AIDS Program (now, the Division of AIDS), where she was in charge of developing a clinical research program in AIDS-associated opportunistic infections and malignancies, pediatric AIDS and HIV neurologic disease, in addition to working on studies of antiretroviral therapy for adults— a hallmark program that later become known as the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). In 1990 she joined the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as Co-PI of the AIDS Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU) under Dr. John Bartlett. During this period, she served as vice chair and then chair of the ACTG Opportunistic Infections Committee.
In 1995, she was recruited to the University of Cincinnati to lead the HIV research program there, initially as the UC ACTU Co-PI under Dr. Peter Frame and subsequently as PI for many years while continuing to serve in a number of leadership roles within the national ACTG. Dr. Feinberg is well-known for her work in antiretroviral therapy, the prevention and treatment of OIs, HIV in women and clinical trials design.
In 2005, she was the first physician in metropolitan Cincinnati to recognize that the injection opioid epidemic had arrived in southwestern Ohio due to the increase in patients admitted with infective endocarditis, most of whom were transferred from small hospitals in Appalachian Ohio just east of Cincinnati. From her experience in Baltimore, where the majority of her patients had contracted HIV from injection drug use, she knew what would come next. Embracing the principles of harm reduction, Dr. Feinberg started gathering data and seeking community and political support for a syringe exchange program (SEP). Ohio law restricted SEPs to an emergency declaration by a jurisdiction’s public health authority and supported by local law enforcement.
In 2014, this effort finally came to fruition as The Cincinnati Exchange Project, Ohio’s 3rd syringe exchange and its first true syringe services program offering a wide range of services. These included rapid testing for HIV and hepatitis C; linkage to medical and mental health care including helping clients sign up for Ohio Medicaid; linkage to social services such as housing and food; and support for individuals seeking treatment for opioid use disorder. This work led to a shift in the direction of her research, broadening into the treatment of hepatitis C infection and prevention of overdose fatalities as well as HIV. In 2015 she was recruited to West Virginia University to develop a research program focused at the intersection of the injection drug epidemic and its associated complications: overdose, HIV, hepatitis B and C, and endocarditis.
Dr. Feinberg has held numerous federal (NIH, PCORI, CDC, Appalachian Regional Commission), state and industry grants for studies in the management of HIV/AIDS and substance use disorder and its complications. She was elected as chair of the national board of both the HIV Medicine Association and the American Academy of HIV Medicine and continues to play an active part in HIVMA programmatic priorities. She has served on numerous federal (NIH, CDC, FDA) and state (OH, WV) committees dedicated to HIV/AIDS and the opioid epidemic, and currently chairs the WV state syndemic elimination plan for HIV and hepatitis C.
Dr. Feinberg also has a long history of patient advocacy, and of combining science with a devotion to paying attention, listening, building trust— admired by fellow researchers and loved by patients. In an age that eagerly embraces technology and benefits from it, the oldest part of being a physician- providing comfort and support- is still a crucial part of her work.
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose.
Monday, October 20, 2025
9:15 AM - 10:00 AM US ET
60 - Lessons from a Life in Epidemics
Monday, October 20, 2025
9:25 AM - 9:50 AM US ET