[3] McElrath has built and maintains an international HIV vaccine laboratory, in efforts to contribute to the mechanistic understanding of how HIV-1 – the most common and pathogenic strain of the virus – enters mucosal surfaces to infect people.
In 1990, McElrath relocated to Seattle accepting a position at the University of Washington as an assistant professor and to direct the HIV AIDS Madison Clinic at Harborview Medical Center.
Headquartered at Fred Hutch, HVTN is the world's largest network that tests vaccines designed to prevent HIV.
[7] McElrath, her colleagues, and collaborators at Duke University and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine published work pinpointing "immune correlates" that were associated with reduced HIV risk.
[12] In the McElrath Laboratory at Fred Hutch, a primary goal is to determine how T cell memory is induced both in natural infection and by immunization.
[14] These clinical cohorts have been assembled for longitudinal studies in both Seattle and in two nations where the HIV epidemic is widespread – South Africa and Uganda.
[15] On Dec. 1, 2015, the work of McElrath and HTVN scientists pursuing a vaccine to potentially halt HIV and AIDS was highlighted in an HBO/VICE special report titled "Countdown to Zero.