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HIV Center News Briefs
HIV Center Mourns Passing of Alan
Berkman, M.D.
 After
an extraordinary life and career dedicated to social justice and
public health, ranging from clinical care to behavioral research
to pioneering activism, our friend and colleague
Alan Berkman, M.D.
passed away on Friday, June 5, 2009. His death came after many
years of health challenges, including repeated struggles with
cancer, which only reinforced his exceptional empathy for and
dedication to those facing HIV/AIDS and other serious health
problems.
“Alan played a unique role at the HIV Center, acting as a
bridge between clinical care and behavioral research, always
underscoring the linkages between HIV care and prevention,”
noted Anke A. Ehrhardt, Ph.D., Director of the HIV Center. “In
addition to his superb skills as a physician, scholar, and a
biomedical researcher, he was a human rights activist of the
highest order and had a passion and moral courage that inspired
us all.”
A 1971 graduate of the Columbia University College of
Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Berkman was a dedicated combatant
in the social justice struggles of the 1960s and 70s. During the
1980s, he spent several years in federal prison resulting from
his conflicts with US government policy. At mid-career, he
studied at the HIV Center as a postdoctoral fellow from
1995-1997, honing the skills that would he would use over the
following decade in both clinical and research settings,
including as Medical Director of the Highbridge-Woodycrest
Center in the Bronx and later as a professor in the Columbia
University Mailman School of Public Health.
In 1999, Dr. Berkman founded the activist group Health GAP
(Global Access Project). At a time when antiretroviral
medications were becoming available in wealthy countries with
the ability to pay the artificially inflated prices charged by
pharmaceutical companies, Health GAP was – and continues to be –
a leading force for equitable and universal access to HIV
treatments.
At the time of his death, Alan was a member of the Leadership
Group of the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment
Programs (ICAP), and acted as a critical link between ICAP and
the HIV Center. He also served as Co-Director of the Columbia
University/Southern Africa Fogarty AIDS International Training
and Research Program. At the HIV Center, he was a Co-Director of
the Statistics, Epidemiology, and Data Core and a
Co-Investigator of the Global Community Core, as well as a key
research team member on studies in the Dominican Republic.
MAC AIDS Fund Leadership Initiative Renewed
The MAC AIDS Fund Leadership Initiative, which identifies and
provides training and support to emerging leaders in HIV
prevention in South Africa, has been renewed by the MAC AIDS
Fund for an additional two years. This allows the enrollment of
the Leadership Initiative's third and fourth cohorts of Fellows,
who will receive training, mentoring, and seed funding for implementation of the prevention plan they devise in
consultation with the program faculty. To date, the
Leadership Initiative has already trained 20 Fellows, who have
either recently completed their prevention plans in South Africa
or are currently in the process of implementing them. (For
further details about the program, see the
lead feature in the last issue of
the HIV Center E-Newsletter.)
The multisite MAC AIDS Fund Leadership Initiative team met in
January 2009, including participants from the HIV Center,
the UCLA
Program in Global Health, and a new partner -- the Human
Sciences
Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa. (Photo:
Mark Cap)
This March, a
selection board including the Leadership Initiative's Principal
Investigator Anke A. Ehrhardt, Ph.D., Director of the HIV
Center, and Co-Principal Investigator Thomas J. Coates, Ph.D.,
Director of the UCLA Program in Global Health, chose 14
Fellows after a nationwide search.
The training is being conducted in
collaboration with a new partner organization in South Africa,
the Gender and Development Unit of the Human Sciences Research Council
(HSRC). The training began with an intensive phase in
May in the Drakensberg region of South Africa, led primarily by
faculty from the HIV Center and UCLA. The training then
continues for three weeks each in Pretoria and in Durban in June and
July. Relebohile Moletsane, Ph.D. and Vasu Reddy, Ph.D. of the HSRC are overseeing
the six-week training, which is being led by Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan
of the HSRC. Each week, an HIV Center or UCLA faculty member will
also be onsite to conduct workshops, provide lectures, and
advise Fellows.
2009
International Academy of Sex
Research Conference
Alex Carballo-Diéguez, Ph.D.,
HIV Center Associate Director,
and Blanca Ortiz-Torres, Ph.D.,
former HIV Center researcher and
current professor at the
University of Puerto Rico, are
co-hosting the 35th Annual
Meeting of the International
Academy of Sex Research in San
Juan, Puerto Rico from August
19-22. Panel sessions
include: "Current Sex Research
in Puerto Rico"; "What’s New (or
Ought to Be) in DSM-V?"; "New
Perspectives on Female Sexual
Problems"; "IRBs and Sexuality
Research"; "BDSM:
Psychopathology vs. Healthy
Sexual Variant"; "Developmental
Studies of Adolescent Sexuality
and Sexual Behavior"; and "For
Better and Worse: Sexual
Behavior and Long-Term
Heterosexual Relationships".
Lodging and accommodations are
available at the conference
venue, the beautiful oceanside
Conrad Condado Plaza Hotel.
Please see www.iasr.org for the
preliminary program for further
information.
Registration is available online.
The deadline for early
registration has been extended
to June 15.
Arrivals and Departures
 Pamela
Collins, M.D., M.P.H. has been appointed the Associate
Director for Special Populations and Director of
the Offices of Special Populations and Global
Mental Health at the
National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Under Dr.
Collins, NIMH will increase its focus on
disparities in mental health both inside and
outside of the U.S. Her work focuses on mental
health and psychosocial aspects of the AIDS
epidemic in the United States, Sub-Saharan
Africa, and Latin America. Internationally, Dr.
Collins has served on the World Health
Organization Mental Health Working Groups for
the 3 x 5 Initiative (to treat AIDS) and the
Integrated Management of Adult and Adolescent
Illness. She is a member of the advisory group
for the Movement for Global Mental Health and is
a mental health collaborator with the
International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment
Programs (ICAP), which provides HIV care and
treatment to families in Sub-Saharan Africa. In
South Africa, her work has examined the role of
mental health care providers in development of
HIV prevention interventions in psychiatric
settings and the community mental health impact
of HIV/AIDS. A longtime collaborator with the
HIV Center, Dr. Collins will retain her faculty
appointment at Columbia University.
 Elizabeth
Brackis-Cott, Ph.D., an Assistant Clinical
Professor of Medical Psychology has departed the
HIV Center after 11 years of work on studies
focusing on the impact of HIV on children and
families. Dr. Brackis-Cott will be concentrating on
her private practice, which centers on the
treatment of psychological sequellae to acute and
chronic illness. She began at the HIV Center as
a Postdoctoral Fellow and, most recently, was a Co-Investigator on two
NIMH-funded studies. In association with
Dr.
Claude Ann Mellins and
Dr. Mary
McKay, Dr. Brackis-Cott worked on Project
CASAH (Child and Adolescent Self-Awareness and
Health), a longitudinal study of perinatally
HIV-infected adolescents, and on CHAMP+, a
family-based intervention for pre- and early
adolescents, perinatally HIV-infected youth, and
their adult caregivers. "Liz has been an
esteemed and valued colleague for over 10 years.
She has been a Co-Investigator and Project
Director on the majority of my grants during
that time, co-authored multiple papers, and made
significant intellectual contributions," said
Dr. Mellins. "She did all this with a smile on
her face and an inclusive management style. Liz
will be sorely missed."
 Jose
Bauermeister, Ph.D, has taken a position as
Research Assistant Professor in the Department
of Health Behavior and Health Education at the
University of Michigan School of Public
Health. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the HIV
Center, Dr. Bauermeister worked with
Dr. Alex Carballo-Diéguez on the
acceptability and adherence of rectal
microbicides among men who have sex with men. In
addition, he continued his collaboration with
Dr. Carballo-Diéguez regarding the use of the
Internet to meet sexual partners for intentional
condomless anal intercourse ("barebacking")
among men who have sex with men. His current
research focuses on the role of web-based
network dynamics in young men's HIV/AIDS risk
behaviors.
 Lisa
J. Chin, J.D. Ed.D., M.P.H., M.A. has
joined the HIV Center as a Postdoctoral Fellow,
working with
Robert Klitzman, M.D. Dr. Chin’s research is
multi-disciplinary, focusing on public health,
ethics, law, and policy in a global health
context. Her research interests include ethical
issues relating human research
participant involvement in studies
concerning HIV/AIDS; resource allocation for the
HIV/AIDS prevention and care programs; public
health factors affecting HIV survivorship; and
ethical and legal analyses of HIV/AIDS policies.
Previously, Dr. Chin had been a radiation
oncology clinical trials coordinator at Columbia
University Medical Center and an adjunct faculty
member at Long Island University School of
Health Professions, Brooklyn campus.
 Yongfang
Xu, M.D., has joined the HIV Center as a
one-year Visiting Associate Professor, from
March 2009 to February 2010. Dr. Xu is
Section Chief and Associate Professor at the
Nanning Center for Disease Control in Guangxi
Province in the People's Republic of China. At
the Nanning CDC, her responsibilities include
supervising the Department of HIV/AIDS
Prevention and Control, studying infectious
disease epidemiology, implementing
behavioral prevention programs and research with
high-risk populations, undertaking multidisciplinary
family-focused HIV/AIDS prevention care and
treatment, providing HIV knowledge training for
new colleagues, and
serving as an AIDS technical consultant and
inspector. Dr. Xu bring her insights
to the work of the HIV Center while also
furthering developing her research skills.
Seminars Address Sexual, Reproductive Health
& HIV/AIDS Social Movements
The HIV Center's
Global Community
Core (GCC) and
Interdisciplinary Research Methods Core
(IRMC) co-sponsored two seminars from late 2008
to mid-2009, focused respectively on the sexual
and reproductive health needs of HIV-positive
people and on HIV/AID social movements.
While antiretroviral
drugs have begun to normalize the lives of women
and men with HIV, issues of sexuality,
contraception, and childbearing are often
sidelined. Further, significant gaps exist
in service delivery, and in research, including
unmet needs for contraception and preconception
counseling to help HIV-positive women and men
manage their disease and make informed decisions
that optimize outcomes for them and their
existing and/or anticipated children. To
address these issues, the two Cores co-sponsored
a seminar entitled "Managing the Sexual and
Reproductive Health of HIV-positive Women and
Men: Emerging Issues and Technologies."
Held on December 8-9, 2008, the seminar synthesized the most current information
on this complex and neglected topic.
The second seminar, held May 5-6, 2009,
focused on "HIV/AIDS Social Movements: Protest,
Power, and Policy." While behavioral
researchers have long focused on individual,
couple, and family-level interventions, they increasingly recognize the need to intervene
at the structural level to improve
HIV/AIDS health care policy and practice. HIV/AIDS social movements, such as the protest
group ACT UP, have brought about structural change, yet behavioral
researchers have only begun to tap into the
wealth of available studies by and about these movements. At the seminar, three
panels addressed topics including: social
movement theory and methodology; case studies of
movements in China, South Korea, Brazil, and the
US; and intersections among parallel movements,
including feminism, the LGBT movement, and the
anti-war movement.
View
the proceedings here.
Columbia University
Highlights HIV Center
In honor of World AIDS Day,
December 1, 2008, Columbia
University highlighted the work
of AIDS researchers on both the
university website and in
hardcopy in The Columbia
Record. The special report on
Columbia's Commitment to
Tackling the Global Challenge
profiled programs from
throughout the University. The
special report includes an
article specifically on the
20 year history of the HIV
Center.
Resources on the HIV Center
Website
Recordings of our Thursday
morning Grand
Rounds are
downloadable as MP3 podcasts, playable with
any computer or portable media player.
For further instructions and to
view recent podcasts,
click
here. In addition, the list of the
HIV Center's scientific
publications has now been
updated through to the end of
2008.
View the publications list here. |
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