In Memoriam: Martin Fishbein, Ph.D.

It was with deep sadness that we learned of the passing of Martin Fishbein, Ph.D., on Friday, November 27, 2009 at the age of 73 while in London participating on the planning committee of the AIDS Impact Conference. "Marty was a highly respected and distinguished friend of the HIV Center. He had served as a Senior Advisor to the HIV Center since 1992, and he was a friend to many of us -- and to me personally," said HIV Center Director Anke A. Ehrhardt, Ph.D. "I have extended our condolences to his wife Debbie, who was with him in London." 

Dr. Fishbein was the Harry C. Coles, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Communication, and Director of the Health Communication Program in the Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He authored or edited seven books and contributed over 250 articles and chapters to professional books and journals. Dr. Fishbein is perhaps best know as the author of the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction and Change. His theory is the most cited AIDS behavioral theory in the scientific literature, and is widely used in the fields of communication, public health, advertising, and psychology. In addition to his academic accomplishments, he has served on the NIMH Mental Health AIDS Research Review Committee, the NIMH AIDS Policy Subcommittee of the National Advisory Mental Health Council, and has been a special consultant on behavior and behavior change for the NIMH AIDS research program. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Fishbein was a guest researcher in the Behavioral Prevention Research Branch in the Division of HIV/STD Prevention and served as Acting Chief of the Behavioral Interventions and Research Branch of the Division of STD Prevention, in the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention.

Dr. Fishbein's death was the second loss to the HIV Center since last summer, following the passing of HIV Center Investigator Alan Berkman, M.D., M.P.H. on June 5, 2009. Since his passing, Dr. Berkman has been the subject of numerous obituaries, including in The New York Times, POZ Magazine, and The Lancet.  A memorial celebration of Dr. Berkman's remarkable life and career is planned for April 23, 2010 at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

HIV Center website completes redesign

On World AIDS Day (December 1), 2009, the HIV Center launched its newly redesigned website. Earlier in the year, the HIV Center contracted with the Columbia University Web Design Studio (WDS)  to rebuild our internet presence. The WDS started a lengthy design process, reworking the user interface and the information architecture to deliver an improved user experience. Working closely with the WDS in an iterative fashion, the HIV Center's Director of Communications, Raymond Smith, developed a comprehensively revised site. The enhanced website offers a clearer, more logical presentation of material that will make it easier for visitors to find and absorb the information they need. Strong graphic design and a completely revised user interface will help direct the visitor's eye and drive traffic to the desired pages. For example, the home page now features a Flash-based image rotator that highlights and directs the user to key sections of the site. In addition, news and events are more clearly marked, and "quick links" to other important destinations within the site are readily available. To view the website, please visit: www.hivcenternyc.org.

Students "work it out" at Kingston NY High School

After more than fifteen years, the HIV Center intervention "Working It Out" for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth continues to be disseminated throughout New York State and beyond, with new partnerships in development.  Most recently, several dozen students at Kingston, NY High School completed the intervention.

At the graduation ceremony were (left to right) Vanessa Shelmadine, Joyce Hunter, Pam Parker, and Ginny Apuzzo. (Photo by Jan Baer)

A video-based, manualized intervention program for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adolescents, Working It Out was developed jointly by researchers, representatives from community-based organizations (CBOs), and youth. "This intervention is designed to help youth develop skills to manage their developing social and sexual roles and to cope with the stress of stigma, stressful life events, discrimination, and heterosexism," said Principal Investigator Joyce Hunter, D.S.W. "Prejudice, discrimination, and anti-gay violence contribute to stresses on the LGBT youth population," added Dr. Hunter. "These stresses often cause these youth to hide their orientation and behavior, distorting the developmental process and creating isolation and related stresses and unsafe behaviors. For example, young gay men ages 13-24 in the Mid-Hudson region of New York State represent 31% of case of HIV/AIDS in that area."

The intervention was delivered in partnership with the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center and facilitated by Vanessa Shelmadine, Coordinator of Programs and Services and volunteer Pam Parker. “The Community Center is very excited about this joint project, the first of its kind for rural youth,” said Center president Ginny Apuzzo. “As I continue to say, we are working to build tomorrows infinitely safer, saner, and healthier than our yesterdays, and the Working It Out Project is a key component in the Center’s programming for LGBTQ youth in the Hudson Valley."

Fundraising Drive benefits clients of Special Needs Clinic

In light of rising food costs and depleted food pantries, the HIV Center sponsored its second annual Thanksgiving-season food drive to benefit HIV-affected families at the the Special Needs Clinic at New York Presbyterian Hospital. The drive, coordinated by HIV Center Office Manager Hilda Mitjans and Director of Communications Raymond Smith, Ph.D., raised funds  to provide groceries to families in need. The proceeds were accepted on behalf of the clinic by its Co-Director and Co-Founder, HIV Center investigator Claude Ann Mellins, Ph.D.  The Special Needs Clinic, one of the only specialized child psychiatry clinics of its type in New York City, was founded in 1991 with the help of the HIV Center to meet the mental health needs of children and families affected by the dual epidemics of HIV and substance abuse. To address many of the limitations of the current mental health system, the clinic has developed a multidisciplinary mental health team providing comprehensive family based services to adults and children in one site. To read a feature on the Special Needs Clinic in the New York Presbyterian newsletter, click here, and scroll down to pages 4 and 5.

Four Fellows graduate from Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

At the Fellows graduation in July 2009 were (left to right) HIV Center Training Director Theo Sandfort, Graduating Fellows Pamela Valera, Isidore Udoh, Tonya Taylor, and Kate Elkington, along with HIV  Center investigator Claude Ann Mellins and NYSPI Director Jeffrey Lieberman. (Photo by Eve Vagg)

The end of last academic year also marked the graduation of four HIV Center Fellows, who have all have gone on to new professional endeavors. Pamela Valera, Ph.D, M.S.W., is now a Postdoctoral Investigator Albert Einstein College of Medicine Department of Epidemiology and Population Health Division of Community Collaboration and Implementation Science. Isidore Udoh, Ph.D. is now working as an HIV/AIDS Advisor and was also recently appointed as a visiting professor in Nigeria's University of Uyo. Tonya N. Taylor, PhD.  is now a Research Fellow Special Treatment and Research Program SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Katherine Elkington, Ph.D. was recently appointed an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University and remains a researcher at the HIV Center.

In addition, former Postdoctoral Fellow Jenny Higgins, Ph.D., has returned to Columbia University as an Assistant Professor in Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, where she is also a faculty member in the sexuality track. After her graduation from the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in 2007, Dr. Higgins was a Fellow in Contraceptive Technology at Princeton University, where she pursued research on how sexual experiences and motivations influence contraceptive practices, including condom use.   

Initiatives in the Middle East and North Africa

The HIV Center has expanded its engagement with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region through the convening of high-level meetings and Think Tanks in collaboration with the UCLA Program in Global Health (Director: Thomas Coates, Ph.D.). In the MENA region, intraregional collaborations with regard to HIV/AIDS have only rarely occurred, and these meetings have begun to spur a new network concerning issues of HIV and gender. In October 2009, with the support from NIMH, the HIV Center, and UCLA co-sponsored a Workshop on Stigma and HIV Infection in the MENA Region, held in Rabat, Morocco in association with L'Institut National d'Hygiène du Maroc (Director: Rajae El Aouad, M.D.). The meeting included experts in the behavioral, social, and biomedical sciences from Morocco, the HIV Center and UCLA. The focus of the workshop was on improving existing regional programs and strategies that target stigma reduction and developing programs for the scientific characterization and measurement of HIV/AIDS stigma in the region. The Morocco workshop built upon a meeting in Cairo, Egypt co-sponsored by the HIV Center with UCLA in April, 2008, on “Gender and HIV: Policy Lessons for Low Prevalence Scenarios, which identified and highlighted cutting-edge work on the role of gender in the global AIDS epidemic, particularly in the MENA region. In addition, in July 2009, a supplement of the Journal of AIDS was published featuring papers presented at the Cairo workshop on gender that was conducted. The HIV Center has also received funding from the Office of AIDS Research (OAR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a one-day follow-up meeting this summer at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

2009 Manuscript Writing Award

The HIV Center has established a yearly publication award for the Center's Junior Investigators and Fellows organized by the Development Core. The recipient of the award is selected based on the quality of one of his or her first-authored and peer-reviewed papers published in calendar year before the award as well as overall writing productivity. The 2009 Review Committee reviewed the following six excellent, well-written submissions:

• Katherine Elkington, Ph.D.: HIV/sexually transmitted infection risk behaviors in delinquent youth with psychiatric disorders: A longitudinal study.
• Elizabeth Kelvin, Ph.D.: Adding the female condom to the public health agenda on prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among men and women during anal intercourse.
• Nuno Nodin, M.A.: Knowledge and acceptability of alternative HIV prevention bio-medical products among MSM who bareback.
• Tonya Taylor, Ph.D.: Comparison of HIV/AIDS-specific quality of life change in Zimbabwean patients at Western medicine versus traditional African medicine care sites.
• Isidore Udoh, Ph.D.: Potential pathways to HIV/AIDS transmission in the Niger Delta of Nigeria: Poverty, migration and commercial sex.
• Ana Ventuneac, Ph.D..: Use of a rapid HIV home test to screen sexual partners: An evaluation of its possible use and relative risk.

The Committee concurred that the 2009 award should go to HIV Center graduating fellow Dr. Tonya Taylor for the paper that she co-authored with Curtis Dolezal, Ph.D., Susan Tross, Ph.D., and William Holmes, M.D. and published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. This paper addresses a challenging area at the interface between traditional African care and Western care, comparing the impact of these two modalities on quality of life for HIV-infected patients using quantitative assessment. The analysis was innovative in being presented at the level of the two treatment modalities rather than the individual patient. The reviewers also noted the careful treatment and discussion of the limitations of the research. In summary, the paper is an eloquent and compelling presentation of an original body of research that has the potential to inform HIV care policy in Africa by bringing attention to the importance of community-based traditional healers in resource-poor areas, even when Western care is also being provided. The Review Committee comprised Robert Kertzner, M.D., Naa Oyo Kwate, Ph.D., and Rogério Pinto, Ph.D. and was chaired by Patricia Warne, Ph.D.

HIV Center Pilot Studies awarded

The HIV Center Pilot Studies Program 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 from a government institute or private foundation and  result in at least one peer-reviewed publication to be submitted within six months of the end of the project funding period.  In 2009, the HIV Center awarded funds for two pilot studies.  Robert Klitzman, M.D., and fellow Lisa Chin, J.D., Ed.D., will conduct a study of  "Informed Consent, Therapeutic Misconception and Participation Motivators in HIV Vaccine Trials"  to examine a group of US-based HIV/AIDS vaccine trial participants' understanding of the informed consent information, therapeutic misconception of trlal participation and their motivations for participating in an HIV vaccine trial. Elizabeth Kelvin, Ph.D., M.P.H., will focus on "Prevalence, Methods and Acceptability of Female Condom Use for Anal Sex,"  to collect data about the use of the female condom for anal intercourse among men attending the Geffen Center at Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC).

MAC AIDS Fund Leadership Initiative trains third cohort and selects fourth

Marking the start of the transition of the MAC AIDS Fund Leadership Initiative to South African management, training of the 14 members of Cohort 3 of the Initiative was successfully completed in South Africa. The MAC AIDS Fund Leadership Initiative, which identifies and provides training and support to emerging leaders in HIV prevention in South Africa, has to date trained 34 Fellows.  The Fellows of Cohort 3 (pictured in a photo by Joyce Hunter) began their training with a two-week intensive phase in the Drakensberg mountains in May, followed by 3 weeks outside Pretoria and 3 weeks in the rural KwaZulu-Natal Midlands region. The training was led by Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan, Ph.D. of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) along with her HSRC colleagues Relebohile Moletsane, Ph.D. (Director, Gender and Development Unit) and Vasu Reddy, Ph.D. The UCLA Program in Global Health (Director: Thomas Coates) was represented by three of their South Africa-based team, Laurie Bruns, MA, Mushambi Mutuma, and Dean Peacock, MSW. Nearly each week, the HIV Center (Director: Anke Ehrhardt, Ph.D.) also sent a member of its New York-based team. These were Diane di Mauro, Ph.D., Joyce Hunter, D.S.W., Linda Loffredo, M.A., Kate Elkington, Ph.D., Raymond Smith, Ph.D, and Joanne Mantelk, Ph.D. In February 2010, the program also completed selection of Cohort 4, whose 12 members are being trained from March to May 2010. For further details about the Leadership Initiative, see the lead feature in the prior issue of the HIV Center E-Newsletter. 

Recently published books by HIV Center authors

HIV Center investigator Theo Sandfort, Ph.D., recently edited (with Vasu Reddy, Ph.D. and Laetitia Rispel, Ph.D.) a volume entitled From Social Silence to Social Science: Same-sex Sexuality, HIV & AIDS and Gender in South Africa. Published by the Human Sciences Research Council, the book is  a compilation of academic papers  presented at a conference on "Gender, Same-Sex Sexuality, and HIV/AIDS" in May 2007 that was co-sponsored by the HIV Center and the Human Sciences Research Council.  According to the publisher, the volume "presents a unique and innovative effort to examine what we know about homosexual transmission of HIV and AIDS in South Africa. It reverses the trend whereby categories of same sex sexual practice are almost always excluded from research of HIV and AIDS, as well as from care and intervention programs. The varied contributors (academics, activists and program planners) draw attention to the risk behaviors and treatment needs of people who engage in homosexual sex, and explain why same-sex sexuality has to be seen as key within South African efforts to study, test and prevent HIV infection." 

HIV Center Director Emerita Zena Stein, M.B., B.Ch., recently published Eras in Epidemiology (Oxford University Press), co-authored by her husband Mervyn Susser, MB, BCh, DPH, also a Professor Emeritus at Columbia.  According to the publisher, "the authors trace the evolution of epidemiological ideas from earliest times to the present. Beginning with the early concepts of magic and the humors of Hippocrates, it moves forward through the dawn of observational methods, the systematic counts of deaths initiated in 16th-century London by John Graunt and William Petty, the late 18th-century Enlightenment and the French Revolution, which established the philosophical argument for health as a human right, the national public health system begun in 19th-century Britain, up to the development of eco-epidemiology, which attempts to re-integrate the fragmented fields as they currently exist. By examining the evolution of epidemiology as it follows the evolution of human societies, this book provides insight into our shared intellectual history and shows a way forward for future study." 

HIV Center collaborator Ida Susser, Ph.D., a Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York, recently published AIDS, Sex, and Culture (Wiley-Blackwell Publishers). The book is described by the publisher as "a revealing examination of the impact the AIDS epidemic in Africa has had on women, based on the author’s own extensive ethnographic research."  Based on the author's personal experience growing up in South Africa it looks at the impact of social conservatism in the US on HIV prevention programs and discusses of the experiences of women in areas ranging from Durban in KwaZulu Natal to rural settlements in Namibia and Botswana. The book includes a chapter written by Sibongile Mkhize at the University of KwaZulu Natal who tells the story of her own family’s struggle with AIDS.