Community Outreach and Engagement

Partnerships between community groups and health behavioral scientists are crucial both to the development of relevant, effective research programs and to capacity building in those communities. The HIV Center has fostered and advanced these partnerships since its beginnings and has built up a strong and diverse network of community partners in the last 16 years, especially within ethnic and racial minority communities in the Greater New York City area. HIV Center investigators are also partners in multisite trials, cooperative agreements, networks, national committees, and international initiatives, and active participants in a wide range of national and international conferences.

The HIV Center promotes information exchange with both community and academic partners. Grand Rounds have been held every week since the establishment of the Center in 1987, drawing representatives of community-based organizations and colleagues ranging from basic scientists to clinicians to care givers. Since 1991, the HIV Center Newsletter has been an additional resource to a broad spectrum of communities for dissemination of HIV Center research results, for discussion of ethical issues in the epidemic, for a "Voice of the Community," and for providing updates on national and international issues that affect our work. Distribution to the scientific, policy-making, service, and activist communities around the world through unpaid subscription now exceeds 2,000. In March of 2007, the Newsletter became the E-Newsletter published by email. The HIV Center Website, has enabled us both to reach out to scientific and service communities and the public and to share information among HIV Center collaborators.

The HIV Center's international agenda particularly focuses on South Africa, Namibia, and Brazil, countries in which we have established research and community partnerships and a funded record of research initiatives. At the same time, we are expanding to other regions, such as Nigeria, China, India, and Mexico, with feasibility, pilot, and training programs. The AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP) at Columbia University provides advanced training in epidemiology, behavioral science, ethics, and basic science of HIV/TB for fellows from Southern Africa. HIV Center faculty have also been involved in many aspects of the global response to the AIDS epidemic, including advocacy and policy, responses.