Dr. Lawrence Purpura's research interests involve applied epidemiology and outbreak response. Prior to infectious diseases fellowship, he was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he responded to the 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak, the 2016 Rift Valley fever outbreak in Uganda, and the 2015-2016 multi-state Seoul virus outbreak in the United States. During his fellowship training at Columbia he was an ICAP Global HIV Implementation Science fellow and worked on a city-wide home HIV self-testing program with the NYC DOHMH, studied the prevalence of GI pathogens in a cohort of patients taking PrEP, and implemented an intervention to improve HIV and STI screening at Columbia University Medical Center. Since COVID-19, he has been involved with several COVID-19 related research activities, including the establishment of a longitudinal cohort study and acting as a co-investigator in COVID-19 vaccine and treatment trials. His clinical and research focus has been on patients suffering from Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection (PASC) or Long COVID and he has made been involved in projects that aim to elucidate SARS-CoV-2 viral persistence, immunity, and clinical sequelae in convalescent patients. He has K23 funding to evaluate the epidemiology and determinants of neurologic Post-acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 and which brings innovative approaches to this area of investigation.

Clinically, this works extends to caring for patients with Long COVID. He has worked collaboratively across the Department with colleagues from GI, Cardiology and Pulmonary Divisions and from other Departments at Columbia (Psychiatry, Neurology) with the goal of providing multidisciplinary and comprehensive care to patients experiencing long term symptoms after COVID-19 infection: longcovidclinicmedid@cumc.columbia.edu