The candidate, Yvette Calderon, MS, MD is an Associate Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM). Her long term objective is to be an independent primary investigator and lead a research center in the Emergency Department (ED) of an urban public hospital. The center would develop and test behavioral interventions for high-risk underserved patients in the ED. The training goals of this proposal are to teach Dr. Calderon to learn: 1)how to apply theory to a video/multi-media intervention for health education, 2)how to conduct qualitative research, 3)advanced research designs and analysis, 4)how to prepare a successful R01 proposal and manuscripts and 5)study the ethics of adolescent behavioral intervention research. The training plan to achieve these goals includes formal course-work, seminars/lectures, exposure to adolescent research, mentorship and a research plan. Courses in video development and multimedia design, research methods and design and ethics, have been selected from the curricula of New York University, Columbia University and AECOM. A committee of three local experts (Drs. L. Bauman.P. Bijur and R. Macklin) with experience in qualitative and quantitative research methods and ethics will mentor the candidate. Training will also include contributions from faculty at the Steinhardt School of Education (Drs. J Plass and F Shaw). During this award period Dr. Calderon plans to conduct two randomized trials at the Jacobi Medical Center. In the first two-year study phase, she will develop two videos to enhance rapid HIV counseling and testing for adolescents in the ED. One video assists in obtaining consent for HIV testing while the other teaches HIV risk-reduction behavior. In the second study phase she will assess the effectiveness of the two videos. Based on this work, the candidate will submit an R01 proposal to evaluate the effect of the videos on a large inner-city ED patient population using a multi-center design. The public health implications of this work include: 1) increasing access to HIV testing;2) stream- lining patient consent for HIV testing without sacrificing educational and prevention messages;3) earlier diagnosis of HIV-positive patients;4) linking more HIV-positive patients to medical care at an earlier stage;5) reducing HIV risk behaviors. This plan has the full support of the candidate's chairman who will provide the protected time and additional resources needed for completion of this career development award.
