Bisola Ojikutu Appointed Executive Director of the Boston Public Health Commission

JSI congratulates Bisola Ojikutu, MD, MPH, on being appointed executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission. Throughout her career, Dr. Ojikutu has worked to reduce inequity and social determinants of health that are barriers to prevention, care, and treatment of infectious diseases, in particular HIV.

Her clinical research and community service activities have focused on achieving health equity and developing strategies to provide the highest-quality care to vulnerable populations, both in the United States and internationally. Dr. Ojikutu has conducted significant research on the structural factors that promote HIV and STI transmission, and has researched challenges that women who are at-risk and people who are immigrants face. Internationally, she has led USAID-funded HIV projects focused on HIV treatment expansion. 

Since 2009, Dr. Ojikutu has worked with JSI as an HIV senior clinical advisor on both domestic and international projects. In her time at JSI she directed a $30 million project that provided program management, strategic planning, and technical assistance to improve HIV care and treatment to 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

She also served as an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital; an associate physician within the Division of Global Health Equity and the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School for many years.

In 2014, Dr. Ojikutu was honored by the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts as a Hero in Action for her significant and lasting contributions to the HIV and AIDS response in Massachusetts.

Dr. Ojikutu graduated from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, received an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health, and was a Commonwealth Fund/Mongan Fellow in Minority Health Policy at Harvard University. Dr. Ojikutu served on the board of JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. from 2019 to 2021. 

Dr. Ojikutu’s 2020 blog on health equity: How to Ensure the COVID-19 Vaccine Protects Black and LatinX Communities

Journal articles co-authored by Dr. Ojikutu and other JSI staff:

• HIV-Related Medical Mistrust, HIV Testing, and HIV Risk in the National Survey on HIV in the Black Community (2019)
• Temporal Improvements in Long-Term Outcome in Care Among HIV Infected Children Enrolled in Public ART Care: An Analysis of Outcomes From 2004-2012 in Zimbabwe (2018)
• Non-communicable Diseases and HIV Care and Treatment: Models of Integrated Service Delivery (2017)
• HIV Testing Among Black and Hispanic Immigrants in the United States (2016)