This is the Baylor College of Medicine's re-competing research training application for funding under PA-05-140, AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP). The Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative at Baylor College of Medicine first received funding from the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an AITRP in 2000. In five short years, Baylor's AITRP has had a key catalytic role in the creation of what has become the world's largest university-based program dedicated to global pediatric and family HIV/AIDS care and treatment, health professional training and clinical research. The recipient over the past five years of more than $62 million in grants from the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and numerous private and corporate foundations, the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, in partnership with host governments, has established a network of nine Children's Clinical Centers of Excellence in resource-poor settings in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, and today it is on the cusp of producing transformational change in the care and treatment of HIV-infected children and families globally. Baylor recently created a Pediatric AIDS Corps to place up to 250 American pediatricians and infectious disease specialists in its African centers over the next five years to vastly expand capacity for pediatric HIV/AIDS care and treatment and health professional training. Baylor's AITRP serves an absolutely essential role in building the research capacity that will help to sustain these centers over time. Already, a 2004 graduate of Baylor's AITRP, Dr. Nicoleta Vaseliu, directs its flagship Romanian-American Children's Center in Constanta, Romania. Three current African AITRP trainees, all scheduled to earn doctorates in public health disciplines in 2006, will serve as resources in research and database design, epidemiology and statistics and prevention research to the entire Children's Clinical Centers of Excellence Network. No other funding source supports this kind of research capacity development. The challenge and opportunity exist over the next five years to utilize the resources of the Children's Clinical Centers of Excellence Network, the Pediatric AIDS Corps and the AITRP to scale up and inform the prevention, care and treatment of hundreds of thousands of HIV- infected children, impacting millions of young lives across the globe.
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