HIV Center News Briefs

2007 Pilot Study Awards

Each year, the HIV Center Pilot Studies Program, which is part of the Research Capacity Development Core, supports small exploratory studies that address the HIV Center's priority areas of research. Proposed studies are expected to lead to larger projects that will be appropriate for independent funding and to result in one or more peer-reviewed publications. The program is open to HIV Center-affiliated junior investigators and postdoctoral fellows and to more senior investigators who wish to explore a new area of research. This year, two awards were made to junior investigators and two to fellows.

HIV Center Fellow Mark Bradley, M.D. will study depression symptoms and antiretroviral adherence in HIV-positive patients. Under the mentorship of Robert Remien, Ph.D., Bradley will employ a naturalistic design to follow HIV medication adherence changes over time in 30 depressed HIV-positive patients who have just started antidepressant therapy. This study will lay the groundwork for future research and larger studies examining how treatment for depression, and for other serious mental illness, may be employed as a means to increase HIV medication adherence and improve medical outcomes in HIV disease.

Katherine Elkington, Ph.D., an HIV Center Fellow, will seek to measure mental illness stigma in order to understand HIV risk in youth with mental illness, working with mentor Milton Wainberg, M.D. The study sample will be 40 adolescents, aged 12-21, in psychiatric treatment who will be administered in-depth interviews about their subjective experiences of stigma. This study will be an important first step toward developing a future measure of stigma for mentally ill adolescents and toward a greater understanding of the relationships between stigma, mental illness and sexual risk behaviors.

HIV Center Junior Investigator Ana Ventuneac, M.A. will study rapid HIV home tests and sexual decision-making among HIV-negative men who have sex with men (MSM). Continuing her work with her mentor Alex Carballo-Dieguez, Ph.D., Ventuneac will conduct individual in-depth interviews of 20 HIV-uninfected MSM to examine whether these men might use this new technology to screen sexual partners according to their HIV status. This pilot is being proposed to show feasibility for a larger study of the impact of rapid HIV home tests.

Mary Cavaleri, Ph.D., LCSW will pilot test the feasibility and acceptability of the Bridge Program, a peer-delivered intervention for adults hospitalized with HIV-related illnesses. A sample of 20 adults receiving in-patient care at Mount Sinai Hospital for HIV-related illnesses will be randomly assigned to either the BRIDGE Program or standard discharge planning. Preliminary data from this project will be submitted for publication and used to inform a larger scale effectiveness  study. Cavaleri is based at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and will be mentored by HIV Center-affiliated investigator Mary McKay, Ph.D.

Click here for more information on the HIV Center's Pilot Studies Program.
 

Investigator and Staff News

HIV Center Investigator Alex Carballo-Diéguez, Ph.D. has been named a full Professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.  A clinical psychologist who joined the HIV Center in 1988, Carballo-Diéguez focuses his research on sexual risk behavior of men who have sex with men -- especially those of Latin American ancestry-- primary prevention in couples of mixed HIV serostatus, partner notification of exposure to HIV, and microbicide acceptability. Carballo-Diéguez serves as a consultant and grant reviewer to NIMH, NIDA, CDC, and UARP, and is a member of the editorial board of AIDS and Behavior.

Raymond A. Smith, Ph.D. has been named the HIV Center's first Director of Communications.  Affiliated with the HIV Center since 1993, Smith serves as the content manager of the HIV Center's website and editor of its E-Newsletter, and also develops and executes the HIV Center's overall communication strategy.  Smith is editor of the Encyclopedia of AIDS (2001),  co-author of three books on AIDS-related themes, and former editor of the community-based HIV/AIDS magazine Body Positive.

Three new members have also joined the HIV Center's administrative staff.  Hilda Mitjans has been hired as the HIV Center's Office Manager, and is in charge of administration of the central office.  With more than 10 years of experience, Mitjans joins the HIV Center from The Brooklyn Hospital Center.  Two administrators have also joined the HIV Center through our new affiliation with the the New York/New Jersey AIDS Education and Training Center (NY/NJ AETC).  Sudhi Swami, who joins us from the Irving Cancer Research Center at  Columbia, is a subcontract administrator. Gracine Snead is a communications and mailing assistant.
 

Two New Fellows to Join HIV Center

In July, the HIV Center will welcome two new participants to our NIMH-supported Behavioral Sciences Research Training Program in HIV Infection. Since 1989, this program has provided postdoctoral training for 53 fellows, with an emphasis on the recruitment of minority trainees. The training program is focused on state-of-the-art, intensive theoretical and methodological training in human sexuality research with an emphasis on applied problems in HIV prevention.

Jose Bauermeister, Ph.D. is joining the HIV Center from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Bauermeister completed a Ph.D in Health Behavior and Health Promotion in 2007, writing his dissertation on "A Longitudinal Study of Employment's Effects on African Americans'Sex Risk Behaviors as They Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood." Working with Alex Carballo-Dieguez as his mentor, Bauermeister will be in part studying HIV behavioral risks within the context of sexual and social networks.

A 2005 graduate of the doctoral program in health studies at New York University, with a specialization in human sexualities, Huso Yi completed a dissertation on "Development and Preliminary Validation of a Measure of Dimensions of HIV-Negative Gay Men's Experience in the Post-HAART Era." Under the mentorship of Joanne Mantell, Yi's work will include examinations of the role of ethnicity and migration in HIV risk.

Click here for more information on the Fellowship program.

Ethics Roundtables

The HIV Center's final Ethics Roundtable for the academic year 2006-2007 was held on June 21 on the theme of "Reframing the ‘Therapeutic Misconception' in Marginalized Populations: Therapeutic Mistrust and Therapeutic Pessimism in Drug Addiction Research." The presenter was Celia B. Fisher, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Ethics Education at Fordham University.  This was the fourth Ethics Roundtables sponsored this year by the HIV Center's Ethics, Policy, and Human Rights Core, which assists HIV Center investigators in considering and investigating critical ethical, human rights and policy issues posed by the epidemic as well as broader ethical matters related to gender and human sexuality. The other Ethics Roundtables were the following:

• Mindy Fullilove, M.D., Columbia Department of Psychiatry, on "Can Community Review and Consent Work, and If So, How?" (January 29, 2007)
• Sidney Bloch, M.D., Columbia Department of Psychiatry, on "An Ethical Framework in Mental Health: Principles vs. Care (March 12, 2007)
• Thomas Pogge, Ph.D., Columbia Department of Political Science, on "Ethics and Global Health: Intellectual Property Rights vs. Access to Essential Medicine" (April 16, 2007)
• Sherry Glied, Ph.D., Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, on "Challenges in Translating Research into Policy: HIV and Other Areas" (April 30, 2007)

Conference Proceedings on Acute HIV Infection

Proceedings are now available online from the conference "Acute HIV Infection: A Multidisciplinary Symposium." The conference, held in June 2006, was sponsored by the New York HIV Research Centers Consortium, a collaborative project of 21 HIV research centers designed to facilitate inter-institutional, multi-disciplinary collaborations by scientists affiliated with HIV research centers in the Greater New York area. The Consortium is led by HIV Center Director Anke Ehrhardt, Ph.D. with Sherry Deren, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Drug Use and HIV Research at NDRI. Inc. and Jack DeHovitz, M.D., M.P.H., Director of the HIV Center for Women and Children at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center.

The topic of the conference, acute HIV infection (AHI), is emerging as a major new area of focus in HIV prevention. Since people are particularly infectious in the first days and weeks after infection, rapid identification of cases of AHI could help to prevent new cases of HIV transmission and to assist the newly infected in receiving appropriate treatment. The conference proceedings include summaries and poster abstracts of nine presentations, including a clinical overview, a discussion of the biology of acute infection, and consideration of issues in prevention. Also included is a case study of a pioneering program from North Carolina, as well as updates on initiatives in New York State, New York City, and New Jersey. Among the papers was one by HIV Center investigator Robert Remien, Ph.D., entitled "The HIV Prevention Spectrum: Behavioral, Psychosocial, and Structural Barriers to AHI Detection."

Click here to view the conference proceedings.

Click here to learn more about the Consortium.