Archuleta Fights Infections and Stigma Barriers

Associate Professor Sophia Archuleta has built a two-decade clinical and public health career around infectious disease, treating conditions that range from bloodstream infections and tuberculosis to HIV. Her work sits at an intersection that most clinicians avoid: the technical complexity of diagnosing hard-to-detect infections and the social barriers that prevent patients from seeking care in the first place. Stigma attached to conditions like HIV and TB routinely delays testing, which in turn allows infections to progress to advanced, costlier, and harder-to-treat stages. Archuleta's approach targets both sides of that gap, accurate diagnosis and active efforts to reduce the misconceptions that deter patients from presenting early. The practical consequence is a care model that treats the diagnostic challenge and the behavioral deterrent as equally urgent clinical problems. For health systems, the broader signal is that infectious disease outcomes are shaped as much by patient-facing stigma as by pathogen biology, and that neither can be addressed in isolation.