Dr Sloan is an Infectious Diseases clinician who has worked in both high- and low-income countries, accruing extensive experience in the treatment of patients with complex infections, particularly tuberculosis (TB) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). He has contributed to TB Control Programmes in Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, England and Scotland. Currently he is a panel member of the British Thoracic Society Clinical Advisory Service for the Management of Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR-) TB and represents NHS Fife on Scottish Health Protection Networks for TB and blood-borne viruses.
Dr Sloan’s research is targeted towards clinical therapeutics questions of international public health significance. He completed a Wellcome Trust fellowship in Liverpool and Malawi studying the clinical pharmacology of anti-TB drugs, culminating in the award of a PhD from the University of Liverpool in 2013. His ongoing work includes clinical trials, pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modelling of treatment response to anti-microbial therapy, studies to unravel the drivers of antibiotic resistance in East Africa and assessment of programmatic interventions to reduce mortality from infectious diseases in low resource settings. He has active collaborations in range of global settings including Africa, Eastern Europe and South-East Asia and he is a member of the executive group of the EDCTP-funded Pan African Consortium for the Evaluation of Anti-Tuberculosis Antibiotics (PanACEA).
Dr Sloan also has an interest in the acute management of infectious disease outbreaks. He was UK-Med Quality Team Lead during the global response to the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic in West Africa in 2015, served as Clinical Lead for a UK Emergency Medical Team (UK-EMT) deployment to tackle diphtheria amongst the displaced Rohingya population on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in 2018, and is currently technical lead of the Outbreak Response Working Group for the UK-EMT.
Dr Sloan’s current affiliations are:
- Senior Clinical Lecturer in Infectious Diseases, University of St Andrews
- Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases and General (Internal) Medicine, NHS Fife
- Technical Lead of Outbreak Response Working Group, UK-Emergency Medical Team
- Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
- Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer, Division of Infection and Global Health, University of Liverpool
Dr Sloan’s ongoing and recent projects include:
Holistic Approach Towards Unravelling Antibiotic Resistance in East Africa (HATUA) - this MRC funded consortium, led by the University of St Andrews, brings together partners in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and combines expertise in microbiology, clinical infection, epidemiology, geography, data modelling and social science to investigate drivers of anti-microbial resistance in East Africa.
The SAEFRIF Study – in this EDCTP funded trial, Dr Sloan is working alongside Dr Chistine Sekaggya to evaluate the safety and efficacy of high-dose rifampicin in TB-HIV co-infected patients on efavirenz and dolutegravir based anti-retroviral therapy at the Infectious Diseases Institute in Kampala, Uganda.
The Pan-African Consortium for the Evaluation of Anti-Tuberculosis Antibiotics (PanACEA) – this EDCTP funded consortium is conducting an ambitious programme of clinicals trials to assess new antibiotic regimens for drug-susceptible tuberculosis across 11 sites in 7 African countries (www.panacea-tb.net) Dr Sloan co-leads the Biomarkers Work Package for these trials, alongside Professor Stephen Gillespie at the University of St Andrews.
Understanding PK-PD determinants of outcome for non-MDR pulmonary TB re-treatment patients in Vietnam – this MRC-funded project in Hanoi, led by Professor Giancarlo Biagini at LSTM, seeks to understand why patients who present with recurrent episodes of pulmonary tuberculosis in the absence of antibiotic resistance are at high risk of treatment failure.
Dr Sloan also supervises five current PhD students.
Teaching:
Dr Sloan is regularly involved in classroom and clinical teaching of under-graduate medical students and junior doctors in Scotland. He has also been Course Director and Implementation Science Module Co-ordinator for the MSc in Global Health Implementation at the University of St Andrews.
He has taught on the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Diploma in Tropical Nursing and MSc in Tropical Medicine courses at LSTM since 2006, including spells as TB module co-ordinator from 2014-15 and a brief period as interim course co-director in 2014.
He co-ordinates and delivers pre-deployment UK-EMT training on Health and Infectious Diseases in Sudden Onset Disasters for UK-EMT.