Research - Our Team

Laia Vazquez (MD, DTMH) is an INPhINIT Incoming La Caixa fellow at the PhD program on Medicine and Translational Research at ISGlobal and the University of Barcelona.

She graduated as a physician at the University of Granada (2014), Spain. Subsequently she moved to the United States where she completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine- Bridgeport Hospital (2018), followed by a fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (2020), and The Gorgas Diploma Course of Tropical Medicine held at the Alexander von Humboldt Tropical Medicine Institute in Lima (2020), Perú.

Laia Vazquez participates in several projects involving point-of-care testing at mobile units in Madrid, Spain, focusing on prevention of HIV, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections among difficult to reach populations.

The core of her research aims to improve access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV among sex workers. She is currently engaging with novel mHealth tools to study PrEP adherence and its determinants among female sex workers in Spain.

Lines of research

• HIV/AIDS
• Sexually Transmitted Infections
• Viral Hepatitis
• eHealth tools
• Health Systems

Main publications

• Vazquez Guillamet LJ, Marx GE, William B, Pappas P, Lieberman N, Bachiashvili K, Lieberman JA. Relapsing Fever Caused by Borrelia lonestari after Tick Bite in Alabama, USA. Emerg Infect Dis. 2023;29(2):441-444. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2902.221281. PMID: 36692856.
• Vazquez Guillamet LJ, Arauz AB., Suarez JA, Gonzalez E, Domingo de Obaldia J, Henostroza G, & Armien B. Leptospirosis: Epidemiological and clinical characteristics at the national reference hospital in Panama. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2022 Nov 14;107(6):1261-1266. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.21-0851. 10.4269/ajtmh.21-0851.
• Vazquez Guillamet LJ, Babey MM, Mercy N, Blake H, Jasani A, Kyeng R, Tih P, Khan EM, Dionne J. 865. Social Media Secret Facebook Groups for HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Awareness among Female Sex Workers in Cameroon. Open Forum Infect Dis. 2021 Dec 4;8(Suppl 1):S524. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofab466.1060. PMCID: PMC8644663.
• Vazquez Guillamet L.J., Vazquez Mata G. Enfermedades tropicales importadas: Una realidad de importancia creciente “Imported tropical diseases; an emerging reality of increasing importance”. Madrid. Publisher: Organizacion Medica Colegial de España- Consejo General de Colegios Oficiales de Medicos. Editorial: International Marketing & Communication. October 2021. ISBN-13:978-8478678228
• Vazquez Guillamet L.J., Moll AP, Kacin A, Madi J, Ndlovu N, & Shenoi SV. Perceptions of HIV Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among young pregnant women from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. AIDS Patient Care and STDs. 2019, May;33(5):214-219. doi: 10.1089/apc.2018.0242. PMID: 31067125; PMCID: PMC6531897.