Meet Alina Cernasev

(By Abhignya Devarakonda, Stop TB USA, Youth Leadership Board. Interview edited for length and clarity.)  

What is your name, where are you located, and how are you involved in tuberculosis?

My name is Alina Cernasev. I’m a faculty member at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and the College of Pharmacy. By profession, I’m a pharmacist, but I’m also a researcher. Therefore, I’ve had a role in TB for the last 10-15 years. My interests were sparked during my Advanced Practice Pharmacy Education Rotation at the World Health Organization in 2014, which was on the pharmacovigilance of TB and HIV medications. And then during my PhD years, I heavily focused on African-born people living with HIV in Minnesota and their access to care. When I started my role as an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, I continued doing research on HIV, and then reached out to the infectious disease professor so I could teach a course that focused not only on the medication regimen for people living with HIV who have contracted TB but also on patient care and clinical outcomes. So I’ve been teaching about TB since 2020.

What is your message about TB and who is your target audience for that message?

My message is for clinicians and providers:  we have to make our patients aware of TB and to get more visibility of TB in the medical world. Sometimes TB might not be the first thing on their mind when making a diagnosis. 

What is your vision for tuberculosis? What do you hope to contribute to StopTB USA and what excites you about being a part of StopTB?

It has been a wonderful collaboration. We’ve done various projects together and my vision is to make pharmacists more visible in this world. We can have a significant role and in a community, pharmacists are often one of the first points of care. So, hopefully I will make them more visible in StopTB. Pharmacists’ voices can be more unified and vocal, and I would love to see more pharmacy-oriented projects. 

What is your life like outside of TB. 

I’ve been doing yoga for almost 11 years now. I also like reading a lot, for example, last year I read Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green, which was excellent. I also love to travel and have 57 countries under my belt.