Professor, Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases; Department of Microbiology
Children's of Mississippi, University of Mississippi Medical Center
Disclosure: I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Dr. Hobbs is a Professor of Pediatric Infectious Disease and Microbiology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) and an attending physician at Children’s of Mississippi. She completed her fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Disease at New York University/Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital in New York, NY. She was then awarded a position in NIAID’s Transition Program in Clinical Research as an Assistant Clinical Investigator in the Laboratory for Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology. During her 5 years at the NIH, she investigated the immunological and pharmacological effects of HIV drugs in animal and in vitro models of malaria infection as well as through clinical studies in Lilongwe, Malawi and Rakai District, Uganda. Currently, she continues work in this vein with collaborators at NIH. In parallel to this work, she is conducting epidemiologic studies in Mississippi, performing surveillance in children for soil-transmitted helminth infections, in collaboration with the CDC, and maintains a research lab with this focus with CDC-trained microscopists and technicians. She has published surveillance data for these infections in children from various high risk areas within the state, and also works to provide education to providers and patient populations regarding awareness of these infections. In addition, with the COVID-19 pandemic, she has initiated pediatric safety studies in schools and seroepidemiologic studies which have had significant impact on school re-opening guidelines. She is also site PI of the Overcoming COVID-19 CDC/Boston Children's study at UMMC, contributing to multiple recent high level publications which aim to characterize SARS-CoV-2 and its associated complications in children. In addition and within this context, she is leading a COVID-19 disease characterization in infants study as well as a multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) exposures case control study as the clinical coordinating center with CDC. Dr. Hobbs works with Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Mississippi State Department of Health as well as with the UMMC Center for Telehealth to provide Pediatric COVID education also for providers throughout the state. Overall, her work aims to benefit children from resource limited settings, as parasitic infections such as soil-transmitted helminths and malaria occur more frequently in these settings, in addition to her work in pediatric COVID-19.
