King K. Holmes, UW professor of global health and medicine in the Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is the recipient of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) 2013 Alexander Fleming Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award recognizes Holmes' career in research on the epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STI), and other infectious disease. The award honors Holmes for his major contributions to the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge about infectious diseases.
Holmes pioneered the modern era of STI prevention and control. The older field was classified as "venereology," and included five classical venereal diseases. He conceptually shifted the field from one that was focused on these five infectious diseases to a wide variety of infections that cause serious complications, can disseminate throughout the body, and shared a sexual mode of transmission. The impact of this paradigm shift in thinking created a whole new field and viewpoint. It became possible to think of a broader array of pathogens and their diverse impact on human reproductive health, cancer, and systemic disease. His contributions paved the way for recognizing the impact of STIs on many organ systems in clinical medicines, and public health.
Holmes and his colleagues discovered the microbial etiologies of over 15 different disease syndromes and helped define the role of STIs in complications of sexual assault, and in hepatitis and anal and genital cancers. He developed and evaluated clinical criteria and diagnostic tests to recognize most of these syndromes and new pathogens. He also pioneered the identification of optimal antimicrobial therapy and other forms of prevention for most of these diseases and syndromes. In short, he established evidence that has been used widely by IDSA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization (WHO) in developing their guidelines for the diagnosis and management of STIs.
In the early 1980s, Holmes recognized the potential global threat of AIDS. Working with his collaborators and trainees, he helped define the many determinants that were important in the sexual transmission of HIV internationally and demonstrated the synergistic role of other STIs that enabled the HIV epidemic to expand rapidly within groups at risk for other STIs. He has been instrumental in promoting individual-level and population-level efforts to limit the spread of HIV and other STIs by combining effective biomedical and sociobehavioral interventions.
Holmes became the first William H. Foege Chair of Global Health at UW in 2006. He heads the Infectious Diseases Section at Harborview Medical Center and directs the UW/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Center for AIDS Research, and the UW Center for AIDS and STDs. He is also principal investigator for the International Training and Education Center on Health, a collaboration between the UW and University of California San Francisco - one of the largest HIV/AIDS training programs in the world.
The Fleming Award is one of numerous awards Holmes has received for his work, including the 2013 Canada Gairdner Foundation Global Health Award announced earlier this year.
