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 By Anke A. Ehrhardt, Ph.D.
Amidst an increasingly globalized epidemic, our work at
the HIV Center has also become increasingly globalized.
At the same time, we have always been firmly rooted in
the City and State of New York, and remain so today.
This can be seen right in the very names of our two home
institutions: the New York State Psychiatric Institute
and a university whose official designation is
Columbia
University in the City of New York. In this issue of
the HIV Center E-Newsletter, we bring you news
about our ongoing engagement with and commitment to New
York City and New York State, where the course of
HIV/AIDS has often predicted the trajectory of the
larger global epidemic.
The lead story recounts the process
through which HIV Center researchers led by
Theresa
Exner, Ph.D. have forged a unique collaboration
with the New York State AIDS Institute to promote use
of the female condom in agencies throughout the state.
What is particularly exciting about this program is
that, as a structural intervention, it can magnify its
effect by changing policies and practices at the
organizational level and thus reach thousands of New
Yorkers.
The second feature in this issue
involves our long-running engagement with local and
regional New York agencies
who serve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth.
More than a decade after its introduction, the
video-based "Working It Out" Project led by
Joyce
Hunter, D.S.W. continues to be applied and adapted
throughout the greater NYC area and beyond.
Other news in this issue also
reflects our ongoing commitment to New York, including
the forthcoming conference sponsored by the
New York HIV
Research Centers Consortium, which I co-direct, and the
appointment of one of our investigators,
Robert Klitzman,
M.D., to the Empire State Stem Cell Board. |
As I was writing this column, the
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
reported that new HIV infections among young gay men
were up 33% since 2001. Of nearly 500 new infections
reported in 2006, 32% were among Latinos and 47% were
among African Americans.
These and other grim statistics are alarming in
their own right but also suggest troubling patterns for
the future. Ever since AIDS first emerged in
1981, New York has been not only an HIV epicenter but
also a predictor of the future of the epidemic
throughout the world. It was in New York,
particularly, that the multilayered nature of the
epidemic could first be discerned among such diverse
populations as injection drug users, women, men who
have sex with men, adolescents, and children.
Our research has continued to focus on
all of these populations in New York, and to have
significant implications for work among these groups
globally. For example, studies by
Claude Ann Mellins,
Ph.D. among perinatally infected children and
adolescents in New York
has been crucial in trying to understand and provide for emerging waves of perinatally infected children in
Africa. Likewise, early research on medical adherence
conducted in New York by
Robert Remien, Ph.D., is also
finding significance globally as antiretroviral medications
become more widely available in the developing world. As evidence emerges that mental illness and mood
disorders, especially depression, are contributing
greatly to HIV transmission globally, our groundbreaking
work in New York on these topics is also becoming relevant
worldwide. Indeed, New York continues to reflect
the future of the AIDS epidemic in 2007, just as it did
in 1997 and 1987.
And so, we remain committed to
maintaining and expanding our work both at home and
abroad. Most recently, we have begun to explore renewed
collaborations with Gay Men's Health Crisis, the
outstanding New York-based agency that rightly calls
itself "first in the fight against AIDS." Our
investigators have begun meetings with GMHC personnel on
topics of mutual interest, such as the impact of
home-based HIV testing. As one small part of this
collaboration, we are pleased to share the thoughts of
Bill Stackhouse, Ph.D., Director of GMHC's Institute for
Gay Men's Health, in this issue's "Voice of the
Community" column. |
