Dr. Juan C Salazar is Professor and Chair in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut Health Center, and Physician in Chief at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. He also directs the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and the Pediatric and Youth HIV Program at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. He has joined the full time faculty at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Pediatrics in November of 1998. In September of 2013 he was promoted to Professor of Pediatrics and appointed Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the UConn School of Medicine. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society, the HIV Medical Association and the Hartford and Connecticut State Medical Societies. He has a joint appointment as Professor of Immunology and a member of the graduate school in Public Health at the UConn Health Center. He is graduated from Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia in 1986. He completed his Residency in Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut and a Fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He also holds a Masters in Public Health/Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. He is also a board certified in Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases. He has authored and co-authored over 70 papers and book chapters describing his research and various topics in infectious diseases.
His basic translational research interest focuses on the pathogenesis of spirochetal diseases including Lyme disease and syphilis. He has NIH funded to (1) conduct a translational study of syphilis in Colombia and (2) to assess the role of the innate immune responses in humans to Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease. He has been the principal investigator for a variety of NIH and pharmaceutical industry sponsored clinical trials, including anti-retroviral treatment, childhood vaccines and antibiotics for common pediatric infections.
