West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North Grad Jessica Li Co-Authors Nature Article

HAMILTON, NY (11/01/2012)(readMedia)-- West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North grad Jessica Li, a sophomore at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY, coauthored a full-length commentary about HIV prevention in China that was published recently in the science journal Nature.

The comment piece, "HIV prevention: Bring safe sex to China," examines how an anti-homosexuality stigma in China has contributed to an alarming rise in HIV infection among the country's nearly 18 million homosexual men. The solution, contends Li and her coauthors, will require a cooperative effort between the government, health professionals, and public programs.

Li's contribution is the result of a two-year collaboration that started in 2010, when she met Professor Zhang Linqi, of the Comprehensive AIDS Research Center and Research Center for Public Health at Tsinghua University School of Medicine in Beijing.

Li's parents, who both studied in China as undergraduates, were classmates of Linqi, who helped her secure an internship at FHI 360 in the city of Kunming. While she was there, Linqi proposed that she collaborate on the HIV commentary for Nature.

"Professor Zhang Linqi asked me if I would help him write an article that would be a synthetic overview of the current research on HIV among men who have sex with men in China, the future of the pandemic, and the steps that the government and NGOs take in order to mitigate the risk of the spread of HIV to the general population," said Li, whose intended major is geography with a minor in Chinese.

Li was accepted to Colgate as a Benton Scholar, a highly selective and rigorous four-year leadership-development program with a local and global focus. Li is also an officer in the Student Global AIDS Campaign.