Renata Sanders

Renata Arrington-Sanders is an Associate Professor of adolescent medicine and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her areas of clinical expertise include adolescent sexually transmitted infections and HIV, adolescent transition to adult care, caring for sexual- and gender-minority young people, and school-based health centre needs. She has a joint appointment in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Departments of Epidemiology and Health, Behavior and Society. She serves as Medical Director of the Pediatric and Adolescent HIV/AIDS Program, Director of the PrEP Program (prepisforyouth.org) in the Harriet Lane Clinic at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, and co-Director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Scientific Working Group at Johns Hopkins Center for AIDS Research.  

National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA, 1R01DA043089-01), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Baltimore City Health Department fund her work to identify HIV-positive and vulnerable young Black men who have sex with men and trans and gender non-binary adolescents and link them to care. She has served as a consultant to the CDC as a representative for the Maryland Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics to the Maryland General Assembly to make recommendations on HIV testing laws and has worked locally with the Baltimore City Health Department to improve HIV testing strategies for young people.   

Renata joined the IAS Governing Council in 2020. She has served on the IAS Scholarship Programme from 2005, IAS Stigma Advisory Board, Youth Ambassador Programme at IAS 2021 and Collaborative Initiative for Paediatric HIV Education and Research (CIPHER) Research Grant Working Group. She has also assisted with planning multiple IAS-related workshops and programmes. She has been an active member of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) Abstract Review Committee (2009-2013), Nominations Committee of SAHM (2020-2021), Governance Review Subcommittee of SAHM (2019-current), and Member-At-Large Representative on the SAHM Board of Directors (2016-2019). She was Regional President of the Chesapeake (2014-2016) and LGBTQI Special Interest Group Leader (2014-2019).  

She has been a member of the Principal Investigator group of the Adolescent Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions and co-principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins Site (2011-2016), where she led community-based protocols, including Connect2Protect and the SMILE Linkage to Care Program for young people living with HIV. She has served on the Abstract Review Committee of The International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research. From 2014 to 2019, Renata served on the Adolescent Medicine Subboard of the American Board of Pediatrics. She currently serves on the Research Advisory Committee of the American Board of Pediatrics, North American Thrombosis Forum, Venous Thrombosis Embolus Preventing & Managing Thrombosis in the Transgender Community National Committee, and the Board of Directors of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.  

Renata’s leadership achievements have been recognized by multiple awards and roles in committees. For example, in 2007, she was selected out of 300 applicants to attend the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development Summer Institute in Applied Research on Child and Adolescent Development. She has been selected to participate in three leadership development programmes: the Association of American Medical Colleges Early Career Women Faculty Professional Development Seminar, the 2015 Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Leadership Program for Women Faculty, and the 2021 Johns Hopkins Leadership Development Program. In 2017, she was one of 11 faculty awarded the Diversity Leadership Council’s Diversity Recognition Award for work with sexual- and gender-minority young people. In 2019, she was among 23 researchers asked to present her work on Capitol Hill in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC where 602 registrants learnt about seminal research and programmes across Johns Hopkins University.