Adherence 2019 was held on June 17-19, 2019, at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel in Miami, FL, USA. Sponsored by the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC).

This annual series of conferences featured the presentation and discussion of HIV treatment and biomedical prevention adherence research, and current behavioral and clinical perspectives in practicum, within the context of optimizing the continuum of HIV care and prevention. Adherence 2019 also featured an implementation science track focused on closing gaps between evidence and routine practice for health in real-world settings. The 2019 conference’s Co-Chairs were Catherine Orrell, MBChB, MSc, MMed and Robert H. Remien, PhD.

HIV Center members and affiliates poster and oral presentations included:        

Poster Abstracts

• Dr. Iván Balán, presented “Fostering Adherence and Open Communication through PrEP Biomarker Feedback”.
• Dr. Alex Carballo-Diéguez, presented “Few Aggressive or Violent Incidents are Associated with the Use of HIV Self-Tests to Screen Sexual Partners among Key Populations”.
• Dr. Justin Knox, presented “Assessing Psychosocial Determinants of PrEP Adherence in Black MSM and TGW in a Community Clinic in Harlem Using Two Measures”.
• Dr. Christine Rael, presented “Feasibility and Relative Efficacy of Targeted Online Strategies for HIV Study Recruitment”.        
  
  
  
   

Oral Abstracts

• Michael Hager, M.P.H, presented “Closing Evidence-to-Practice Gaps: New Jersey's Collaborative Approach to Behavioral Health Integration in HIV Settings”.
• Dr. Alissa Davis, presented “Longitudinal ART Adherence Trajectories and Sociodemographic and Psychosocial Predictors among ART Initiators in Cape Town, South Africa”
• Dr. Sarit Golub, presented “PrEP Adherence Self-Efficacy Scale Predicts Uptake, Persistence, and Adherence over 12 Months”.
• Dr. Nadia Nguyen, presented “Can Self-Reported Adherence Predict ART Adherence Assessed by an Electronic Monitoring Device (Wisepill) in Resource-Constrained Settings in Cape Town, South Africa?”
• Dr. Jason Zucker, presented “Using Individualized Provider Feedback to Improve HIV Screening in a High-Volume Emergency Department”        
  
  
  
   

Dr. Peter Anderson was featured on the panel, "Assessing Treatment Adherence: Is There Something Wrong with Your Measurement?"

Conference Co-Chairs Orrell and Remien each moderated panels, "Examining Option B-Plus: Is it the Panacea We Had Hoped For?" and "Accelerated Treatment: Perspectives on Same-Day ART Prescription," respectively.        

Pictured, (clockwise from top left), are Drs. Orrell and Remien, Alissa Davis, Sarit Golub, Michael Hager, Jason Zucker, and Nadia Nguyen.

World AIDS Day will be marking its 30th anniversary on December 1st 2018. This year’s theme will be “Know your status.”

Significant progress has been made in the AIDS response since 1988, and today three in four people living with HIV know their status.  That said, 1 in 4 do not know their status and thus, there is still much work to be done in reaching people living with HIV who do not know their status, ensuring that they are linked to quality care and prevention services.  HIV testing is the first step in the HIV Care Cascade and is essential for expanding treatment and ensuring that all people living with HIV can lead healthy and productive lives.

Tremendous advances have been made in HIV prevention and treatment since the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS and the early days of the epidemic.  HIV is no longer a “death sentence” and is now seen as a manageable chronic illness with the possibility of living a normal lifespan.  In addition, it is now known that it is highly unlikely – some would even say impossible – for a person living with HIV who is adherent to their treatment and maintains a suppressed HIV viral load to transmit the virus to sex partners and from mother-to-child during pregnancy and childbirth.  This, along with the success of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), gives us all high optimism for the potential of ending the HIV epidemic with successful wide-scale implementation of HIV prevention and treatment.

We know however, that we still face many challenges to successfully scaling up these biomedical advances due to economic, social and health disparities, particularly for the most vulnerable populations.  And unfortunately, stigma and discrimination still deters people from taking an HIV test, finding out their status, and accessing and adhering to effective antiretroviral therapy.

The HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies is dedicated to the development and implementation of innovative multidisciplinary research that will advance the knowledge and science of HIV prevention, treatment, and care, both domestically and globally. The Center provides the value-added infrastructure to ensure methodological and theoretical rigor, to identify and respond to new trends in the epidemic, to support critical partnerships across research and practice sectors, and to train new behavioral scientists.  

We join our friends and colleagues across the globe this World AIDS Day in raising awareness about the importance of knowing one’s status and calling for the removal of all barriers to accessing HIV testing, as well as ongoing care and treatment.  

Click HERE for a list of recent HIV Center publications.

-Robert Remien and HIV Center Leadership

In this video produced by the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Robert Remien, HIV Center Director, and Dr. Claude Ann Mellins, Co-Director, break down the state of HIV/AIDS in 2018, prevention and treatment advances, vulnerable populations, mental health, and optimism to help reduce sigma, raise hope, and improve physical and mental health outcomes.

Follow #RockTheRibbon and #WorldAIDSDay for more World AIDS Day media.

WORLD AIDS DAY EVENTS

Join Columbia University’s ICAP for “Knowledge is Power: World AIDS Day at 30” featuring presentations, panel discussions, and a video premiere around the theme of “Know your status” – the official theme for World AIDS Day 2018.

December 4, 2018 - 1:30-3:00PM       
Hess Commons, Allan Rosenfield Bldg       
722 W. 168th St., New York, NY 10032

RSVP and add to calendar

Making it Happen, Getting it Done!

Join the third annual Ending the Epidemic (ETE) Summit hosted by the New York State Department of Health’s AIDS Institute.

December 4-5, 2018       
Empire State Plaza Convention Center, Albany, NY. 

Click HERE for more details and to register for the event.

HIV Center Co-director Gina Wingood, ScD, MPH, has been named the 2018 recipient of the Ryan White Distinguished Leadership Award, along with Ralph DiClemente, PhD.   

The Ryan White Distinguished Leadership Award was created in 2009 by the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention (RCAP) to honor Ryan White and persons who have made significant, national, and/or international achievements in HIV/AIDS prevention.

Ryan White, a rural, Indiana youth, contracted HIV in 1984 and became a national poster boy on AIDS until his death in 1990, a few months prior to his intended enrollment at Indiana University, Bloomington. The award plaque given to each recipient reads "In appreciation for your outstanding contributions to HIV/AIDS prevention and for being an exemplary bearer of the standard of excellence and commitment needed to combat HIV/AIDS.   

Congratulations, Gina!

The HIV Center had a strong presence at the 2018 HIVR4P Conference in Madrid, Spain.

We are proud of the HIV Center members and collaborators who presented their scientific findings and participated in satellite sessions to share their expertise in line with this year’s theme “From Research to Impact”:

• Dr. Elaine Abrams was part of a symposium on “ARVs for Prevention in Women of Childbearing Age” where she presented “Efavirenz and Dolutegravir: A Tale of two ARVs”        
• Dr. Ivan Balan presented two posters titled “Fidelity Monitoring to Ensure Accurate Implementation of an Evidence-based Adherence Counseling Intervention in MTN-025 (the HOPE Study)”, and “SMARTtest: User-designed Smartphone App to Facilitate HIV Self and Partner Testing, Interpretation of Results, and Linkage-to-Care”
• Dr. Alex Carballo-Dieguez was part of a Oral Poster session, “PrEP: Doing it Right at Delivery“, where he presented on anal douching among men who have sex with men (Titled: Towards the Development of a Behaviorally Congruent HIV-prevention Rectal Microbicide Douche - The DREAM Study).
• Dr. Sarit Golub, member of our Implementation Science and Health Outcomes (ISHO) Core, was part of a symposium on “Optimizing PrEP Delivery for PrEP Users”, where she presented “PrEP Messaging: Taking “Risk” out of the pitch”.
• Javier Lopez-Rios presented a poster titled: “Knowledge and Awareness of Acute HIV Infection Among Patients of Primary Care Clinics in High HIV Prevalence Neighborhoods of New York City”
• Dr. Joanne Mantell presented three posters titled ““Stigma Is Killing so Many People”: Barriers to HIV Testing Among HIV-negative Adolescent Girls and Young Women Around Lake Victoria in Western Kenya”, “PrEP “Can Make You Have Peace”: Perspectives on PrEP Among Young Female Sex Workers and Their Male Clients in Kisumu, Kenya”, and “Perceived Acceptability of Intravenous Infusion of Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies Among Individuals Residing in NYC High HIV Prevalence Areas”
• Dr. Christine Rael presented a poster titled: “Understanding the Acceptability of Removable Implanted Medication Delivery Devices (RIMDDs) as a Possible New HIV Prevention Method”
• Dr. Robert Remien took part on the roundtable “Getting to U: Undetectable =  Untransmittable”, where he presented an overview of adherence to antiretroviral medications (Title: Starting and Staying on ARVs).
• Dr. Theo Sandfort presented an oral abstract titled “HIV Incidence among Men who have Sex with Men and Transgender Women in Sub-Saharan Afirca: Findings from the Multi-Country HPTN 075 Cohort Study”, and was part of a press conference on HIV Prevention for Key Populations.

For more information about the conference and view the online program, click here. To view session recordings, click here.

The HIV Center would like to extend congratulations to our colleagues and collaborators at ICAP on their 15 years of dedicated work in HIV/AIDS research.

“Through a mix of research, implementation, and training, ICAP pursues its mission to make health and well-being a reality for populations around the world.”

Click here for a short video celebrating their 15 year anniversary.

The HIV Center continues its commitment to disseminating research findings by having a strong presence at the 2018 International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

We are proud of the HIV Center members who presented their scientific findings and participated in satellite sessions in their areas of expertise:

• Dr. Alex Carballo-Dieguez was part of a satellite session, “Anal sex from top to bottom: Beliefs, behaviors and policies for better health“, where he presented on anal douching among men who have sex with men (Titled: MSM & The Double Delights of Douching).
• Dr. Bryan Kutner, a Post-Doctoral fellow at the HIV Center, presented a poster titled: Stigma toward anal sexuality is associated with decreased engagement in HIV services and safer sex practices among MSM in the United States: A mixed-methods study using structural equation modeling.
• Dr. Claude Ann Mellins was part two workshops: 1) “The intersection of mental disorder screening and treatment and HIV/AIDS in LMICs: State of the science and priority directions” where she presented on Promoting mental health in adolescents growing up with HIV and 2) “The 4th HIV Exposed Uninfected (HEU) Child and Adolescent Workshop”, where she presented her talk It’s About Time: Understanding the Mental Health Needs of Uninfected Youth with Perinatal HIV Exposure. She was also joined by HIV Center Director, Dr. Robert Remien, in a session on Mental health & HIV: Supporting communities and turning stress into resilience, where she presented her talk “Strengthening resilience among adolescents / families - Mental health & HIV: Supporting communities and turning stress into resilience”.
• Dr. Robert Remien also took part on the Mental health & HIV: Supporting communities and turning stress into resilience session, where he spoke about the interplay between mental health and HIV (Titled: Setting the stage: HIV and mental health what do we know so far?)
• Dr. Reuben Robbins, HIV Center member, presented a poster titled: Neurocognitive outcomes among perinatally-HIV infected young adults.

June 25th, 2018 - HIV Center member Dr. Denis Nash has been recognized by the CUNY Board of Trustees as Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.  Dr. Nash is widely recognized as an international leader in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.  

Dr. Nash previously served as the Co-Director of our Public Health Policy and Practice core and now joins us as the Director of the Implementation Science and Health Outcomes Core. We are very proud and privileged to count on his support and expertise in the coming years.  

Congratulations!

April 18th, 2018

Drs. Robert Remien and Bryan Kutner from the HIV Center were invited by the Columbia iQ* LGBTQ student group to the HIV/AIDS Today event as panel discussants. The event hosted conversations about the state of HIV/AIDS in New York City, including new and emerging scientific findings. Drs. Remien and Kutner joined Angela Aidala PhD (Associate Research Scientist in Sociomedical Sciences) and Daniel Chiarelli PhD (Associate Director of Columbia's Gay Health Advocacy Project) for a Q/A discussion about myths and facts, biomedical interventions (e.g., Treatment as Prevention and PrEP), Syndemics, Health Disparities, and the emergence of the “U=U” campaign (Undetectable = Untransmittable). 

"We were surprised by the level of knowledge among the students. Many had heard of PrEP and some of PEP, fewer had heard of U=U or some of the promising biomedical interventions under current or planned study, like injectable PrEP, rectal microbicides, and vaginal rings."    

The HIV Center is committed to collaborating with community members across NYC in order to communicate and share up-to-date findings in the HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention landscape. Dr. Kutner states “in-person outreach, responding to specific questions about the epidemic, continues to offer an opportunity to clarify misinformation.”

*Columbia iQ is the affinity group of LGBTQ undergraduates which seeks to foster queer and trans leadership and community in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).  From discussions and panels to networking and employer site visits, iQ is committed to community-building, mentorship, and expanding the visibility of queer and trans individuals in STEM.