Her first book The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS,[2] which examines factors influencing decision-making for HIV prevention, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2009.

[4] After working as a journalist for many years, Pisani changed professional course, taking an MSc in Medical Demography and later a PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

[8] She also worked with Wellcome to explore ways of increasing engagement between scientists and society in the countries where they sponsor major research programmes.

One outcome of this was the "Foreign Bodies, Common Ground" exhibition,[9] bringing together art from residencies in research centres in Thailand, Vietnam, Malawi, Kenya, South Africa and the UK.

[12] In 2008, she published her first book The Wisdom of Whores,[2] which argues that a substantial portion of the funding devoted to HIV and AIDS is wasted on ineffective programming, the result of science and good public health policy being trumped by politics and ideology.

With research grant support from the Wellcome Trust and Erasmus University Rotterdam, she led a four-country study into the political and economic factors driving the market for substandard and falsified medicines, especially in middle income countries,[15] and continues to work in this area.

It turned out to be the second of these, but it took fully four years to change national guidelines and to start treating women with medicines that did work, largely because of the economic interests of government-owned pharmaceutical companies.

The research team looked closely at medicine markets in Indonesia, Romania and Turkey, as well as at producers of active ingredients in China.

They concluded that substandard medicines are most common where oversight of production standards is lax and procurement systems push prices so low that companies are incentivised to cut corners.

[24][25][26] Pisani has been a vocal advocate of the harm reduction approach to addressing HIV/AIDS, supporting needle exchange programmes, making condoms widely available, and giving aid to countries that have policies of legalized prostitution.

"[27] In an article for The Guardian the following year, she criticised the Catholic Church's attitude to HIV/AIDS, asking "[w]hy can't we extend our compassion to those who are not yet infected, and provide them with all the information and tools they need to stay uninfected?

"[14] In late 2011, Pisani took a sabbatical from her day job to explore Indonesia, where she had worked from 1988 – 1991 as a foreign correspondent, and from 2001 to 2005 in her capacity as an epidemiologist and public health advocate.

[33] Since working on Indonesia, Etc., Pisani has contributed articles on Indonesian politics, particularly the 2014 presidential election, to Foreign Affairs,[34] The New York Times[35][36] and Nikkei Asia Review.