Tamari Mgebrishvili

Tamari Mgebrishvili is a PhD student in Public Health in the joint PhD program between Yale University and Ilia State University. She is also a PhD scholar in the Georgian Implementation Science Fogarty Training Program (GIFT), a partnership with the Fogarty International Center at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

Her PhD research project investigates strategies to increase the uptake of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among key populations in Georgia, including women who use drugs, female partners of men who inject drugs, female sex workers, and men who have sex with men. Using Sawtooth software, Tamari will identify patient preferences for how PrEP services should be delivered in Georgia through a choice-based conjoint experiment with about 600 women and MSM at high risk for HIV who meet the criteria for PrEP. 

Tamari’s research will lay the groundwork for an implementation study to introduce PrEP for women and MSM at high risk for HIV. The findings will support national policy in Georgia to expand PrEP access to subgroups of women and MSM who are currently underrepresented in treatment.