Dr. McQuaid began his professional career as a research virologist after graduating with a major in microbiology and minor in chemistry from the University of Maine in Orono. He spent a decade working on the development of novel drugs for the treatment of HIV and Chronic Viral Hepatitis in addition to work on an HIV vaccine. After losing his partner to AIDS in 1996 he decided to pursue a clinical degree to help care for those battling HIV. He trained at the Massachusetts General Hospital to become a family nurse practitioner receiving board certification in 2002. He spent his training working with practices specializing in health care for gay men including, Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, The Massachusetts General Hospital ID Clinic, and The Liberty Medical Group in New York City.
After graduating, he took a position at The Family Health Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. An FQHC, providing full spectrum primary care to families. In 2003, Mr. McQuaid received a clinical instructor of family medicine appointment at UMass Medical School and started precepting family practice residents. The first ever such appointment given to a nurse practitioner with only one year of practice experience. Also in 2003, Mr. McQuaid received a prestigious Meyer’s Primary Care institute grant to pursue his vision of a new model of HCV treatment. A shared-medical appointment model using interferon for the treatment of active drug users with Chronic Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) in the primary care setting. This innovation was inspired by an HCV/HIV co-infected patient who had been denied treatment by specialists, based solely on prejudices around that patient’s drug use. A prejudice that resulted in the patient’s death.
Mr. McQuaid vowed to protect his patients from specialists with such biases and demonstrated active drug users could safely and effectively be treated with interferon-based regimens. As a result, a number of patients previously denied access to HCV treatment were treated and cured. Stemming from this success, in 2004 Mr. McQuaid was recruited by Roche Pharmaceuticals to work as a medical/clinical liaison, where he developed several national programs to bring Hepatitis C treatment to patients with active addiction issues. Mr. McQuaid received his doctoral degree in 2011 after additional training at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2010 Dr. McQuaid accepted an Associate Director position at Gilead Sciences in the Medical Affairs group he was subsequently promoted to become an Executive medical scientist and remains in that position today.
Since leaving full-time medical practice in 2004 Dr. McQuaid has maintained a primary care practice through volunteer work. He has practiced at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, The Americares Bob Macauley Free Clinic of Norwalk, CT and now practices at Anchor Health Initiative in Stamford, CT. He has published papers in The Journal of Nephrology, Dialysis, and Transplantation, The Journal of Clinical and Translational Hepatology, The Journal of General Virology, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapeutics, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has had abstracts presented at both, the US-based annual Liver meeting of the AASLD and its European counterpart, EASL. Dr. McQuaid has currently been accepted to the John’s Hopkins Carey Business School where he is pursuing an MBA.
In his spare time, Tom spends time at his beach cottage in Provincetown MA, weight-lifting, reading, watching movies, and hanging with his Bullmastiff, Chaos.