University of Pittsburgh researcher Sharon Hillier will receive a lifetime achievement award today from the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association at a meeting in London.

Dr. Hillier, director of reproductive infectious disease research at Pitt's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, will get the Thomas Parran Award, named for the first dean of Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health.

It will honor her for her work in the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, but particularly in working with women around the world to prevent infection with HIV, which can cause AIDS.

Dr. Hillier heads up the Microbicide Trials Network, a federally-funded project in the United States, Africa and India testing whether antiseptic vaginal creams can keep women from being infected with HIV by their male sexual partners.

A preliminary study has shown that women using the microbicides got 30 percent fewer HIV infections than those who didn't, and she said in a recent interview it is "the first thing that's ever been proven to reduce the risk of getting HIV in women."

Her network is now about to launch a study testing the microbicides among 5,000 women in South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

She said she was excited to get an award named for Dr. Parran not only because of his connection to Pittsburgh, but because he was a global leader in the early decades of the 20th century in the fight against the AIDS of its day, syphilis.

Dr. Hillier said she feels great empathy for Dr. Parran. "His argument was that syphilis was a completely preventable and treatable disease that was causing terrific harm to families and to children, but that all the money was being spent in treating [late-stage] syphilis because that's where hospitals made a lot of money and they didn't want to do the early prevention and treatment that would have saved lives.

"I thought, you know, it's almost 100 years later and it's almost exactly the same story with HIV. We spend a fortune in this country treating people with AIDS, as we should, but at the same time completely neglecting the prevention side of the argument."

She noted that the United States is experiencing 54,000 new HIV infections every year, and the number is going up. "I think many Americans still believe there is some kind cellophane protecting us, but they're wrong."

She also said many Americans wrongly believe there is something different about African women, either biologically or socially, that makes them more susceptible to HIV infections.

"People tend to think that somehow the women in Africa are wildly different from the women in America, but when you talk to the women there, they have the same kinds of issues of wanting to stay healthy so they can take care of their kids and be in charge of their own lives, and those are human issues and it doesn't matter whether your feet are in Zambia or Zimbabwe or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania."