HIV/AIDS
Reaching around the world
Biostatistics professor James Neaton is researching ways to improve the health and daily life of those living with HIV/AIDS.
The School of Public Health is coming at the HIV/AIDS issue from all sides and all over the globe to stop transmission, help those who have already contracted the disease, and assist other countries in developing good policies for dealing with the virus.
Epidemiology professor Alan Lifson is working to scale up Guyana’s HIV/AIDS care and treatment. As one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean, it has limited resources to fight the disease, which has become the leading cause of death for 25- to 44-year-olds.
Lifson is joining with Guyana’s Ministry of Health, the CDC, and other partners to train health care workers on the most effective way to treat HIV/AIDS. He’s also working with medical and other professional schools in Guyana to develop curricula on the subject.
One of the biggest challenges to health care workers is the complicated and ever-changing nature of HIV/AIDS treatment. They need training to make sure the best drugs are used, side effects are minimized, and patients don’t develop resistance to the drugs.
“This field moves so quickly, we need to help our partners be up-to-date,” he says. But most important to Lifson is developing a program that lasts.
“It’s really important to build something sustainable,” says Lifson. “We want to do this in a way that builds infrastructure and that develops local people who can become experts themselves.”
Trial runs
SPH professor of biostatistics James Neaton and his colleagues have conducted the two largest HIV treatment trials done to date, following more than 10,000 people in 33 countries in randomized studies.
Antiretroviral therapies for HIV/AIDS are costly and complicated—huge barriers for those seeking treatment in the developing world. Neaton’s team is studying strategies that decrease the use of drugs and exploring novel treatments to improve the health of those living with the disease.
Findings from several completed trials have already made a major impact on HIV care. Ongoing trials aim to curb the toxicity of HIV/AIDS drugs and potential resistance to treatment.
Neaton hopes to build a global research strategy to treat HIV/AIDS and recently submitted a proposal to the NIH to establish a collaborative network to conduct research at some 400 sites in 37 countries.
Neaton discusses his research on our Public Health Moment podcast.
Internet intervention
Simon Rosser, professor in epidemiology and community health, attacks the HIV/AIDS issue from the prevention angle and is director of the HIV/STI Intervention and Prevention Studies (HIPS) program at SPH.
One of Rosser’s most recent studies was testing highly interactive Internet-based interventions for men who go on-line to seek sex with men. He believes that it’s crucial to use the Internet for disease prevention, because his research shows that seeking sex is the most popular use for the Internet among high-risk populations.
Rosser and the study’s co-leader, Joseph Konstan, a professor in computer science and engineering, teach a course focused on the concepts and methodologies of developing online prevention for public health issues like cancer, substance abuse, and obesity. Rosser says the course draws students from the School of Public Health, the Medical School, the Institute of Technology, and the College of Liberal Arts.
For more on Rosser’s work, see a recent article in “AIDS and Behavior”
Learning the ropes
For her field experience in 2006, community health education major Ingrid Johansen traveled to Ukraine, a country in transition following the fall of the Soviet Union, and a country in crisis facing the most severe AIDS epidemic in Europe.
She spent time in Odessa, one of the cities hit hardest by the outbreak, interning for the South Ukrainian Pedagogical University. With guidance from a faculty member with expertise in HIV/AIDS research, Johansen visited several facilities, including a rehabilitation center for injection-drug users and an STI clinic.
“I was given a chance to talk to people who typically would have been out of reach,” Johansen says. “I learned so much from everyone. I am stronger after this experience, less afraid to ask difficult questions and more aware of the complicated relationship between health and government.”