A look back and a desire to take others along joins the beauty of dandelions as the theme of this year’s Edward H. Kass Lectureship in the History of Medicine. Allison Agwu, MD, ScM, FIDSA, professor of adult and pediatric infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University, will present “Sankofa and Ubuntu: The Enduring Lessons of Dandelions Illuminate the Path Forward for HIV and Beyond,” Saturday, Oct. 24, at 9:15 a.m. ET.
Dr. Agwu cares for patients across the age spectrum, both in the pediatric and adult Ryan White-funded HIV clinics at Johns Hopkins, as the founder and medical director of the Accessing Care Early Clinic and the program director of the Pediatric/Adolescent HIV/AIDS Program.
She considers the opportunity to deliver one of IDWeek’s most distinguished lectures both an honor and a responsibility.
“I have sat in that audience for many years and seen people that I consider giants in the field of infectious diseases and certainly in the field of HIV,” Dr. Agwu said. “It feels almost overwhelming to be asked to do it.”
She also sees the recognition as an opportunity to inspire the next generation.
“You realize that there’s some young person in the audience also looking at you and saying, ‘Oh, wow, look at that,’ ” Dr. Agwu said. “So it’s an honor and a responsibility.”
The lecture’s title draws on two African concepts that have helped shape her thinking about HIV, medicine and community. The first, Sankofa, is a proverb from Ghana that emphasizes the importance of understanding the past in order to move forward.
“It’s the idea of, basically, you have to reach back in order to move forward,” Dr. Agwu said. “So go back and get it to move forward, and understand what has come before us in order to inform how we move forward.”
The second concept, Ubuntu, centers on collective humanity and interconnectedness.
“Ubuntu is this: ‘I am because we are,’ ” Dr. Agwu said, describing the philosophy as a recognition that individuals succeed and thrive through community.
Learning From Lifetime Survivors of HIV
Those ideas provide the framework for a lecture that will look at the history of HIV through the experiences of what she calls the field’s “dandelions,” people who have survived and persevered despite extraordinary challenges.
A gardener herself, Dr. Agwu has long admired the resilience of dandelions.
“Dandelions will grow through the harshest conditions, through the cracks in the sidewalk, and they will find a way to grow, to come back, to spread and then to flower,” she said. In her lecture, however, the term will carry a deeper meaning.
“Dandelions refer to lifetime survivors of HIV,” Dr. Agwu said. “They are the young people who were born with HIV or acquired HIV really early.”
Their stories, she said, reflect the entire history of the epidemic, from devastating losses and persistent stigma to scientific breakthroughs that have transformed HIV care.
“Worldwide, it’s millions that have survived and are in many cases thriving,” she said. “But also their story is the story of HIV, everything from the devastation to the advances.”
Dr. Agwu said those survivors have taught important lessons not only about resilience but also about advocacy and community. In fighting to be seen and heard, they have often worked to elevate others as well.
“They together are not just focused on themselves as a community,” she said. “They’re pulling everybody with them.”
That message of collective action is one Dr. Agwu hopes attendees will carry beyond the lecture hall. “Everybody has an opportunity to band together to advocate for somebody, for something,” she said.
At a time when infectious diseases professionals face scientific, social and policy challenges on multiple fronts, Dr. Agwu believes the lessons of HIV’s survivors remain especially relevant.
“We all have a responsibility for the future to look back to say, ‘They did it, and we can do it.’ ”