Carey Pike is a 4th year MBChB student and soon-to-be (2023) PhD candidate at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She graduated with distinction from the University of Cape Town with a BSc (Hons) degree in Chemistry and from Oxford University with an MSc in Pharmacology.
Carey has worked for the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation as the executive research assistant to the Director, Professor Linda-Gail Bekker, since 2016. It was there that she developed her research interests in adolescent health and women’s health, specifically concerning sexual and reproductive healthcare delivery and HIV prevention. She has experience in designing, delivering, and evaluating health education and empowerment programmes for adolescent girls and young women.
Her PhD will focus on the roll-out of multiple HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) modalities (oral tablets and long-acting injectable and vaginal formulations) to diverse young populations, including adolescent girls and young women, in Cape Town, South Africa. Her project will investigate which modalities best support short- and long-term persistence on HIV PrEP, as well as how to implement a PrEP choice platform in a way that is effective, acceptable to young people and healthcare workers, and feasible to bring to scale. Her PhD will be undertaken as part of UCT’s combined MBChB-PhD programme. Carey plans to become a physician-scientist with a focus on sexual and reproductive health.
