Core E: Prevention Science Core (PSC) Basic purposes of the core will be: 1) to develop and coordinate Prevention Science activities throughout the CFAR institutions, including Tufts and Brown Universities and the Fenway Community Health Center;2) to expand and coordinate CFAR Prevention Science activities in collaborating institutions in resource-restricted countries;3) to guide behavioral science activities throughout the CFAR;and 4) to assist in the training of local CFAR investigators and international Fogarty trainees in diagnostic techniques appropriate to the early diagnosis of HIV infection in both domestic and resource-restricted environments. Staff of the core will include Core Director Kenneth H. Mayer, MD, Professor of Medicine and Community Health at Brown Medical School. This core provides all Prevention and Education activities in this CFAR including the Fogarty AIDS International Research Training Program, HVTN, HPTN, and other Clinical Immunology Laboratory microbicide research. Dr. Mayer will provide advice on the prevention sciencerelated analysis performed in the Clinical Immunology Laboratory, which is directed by the Retrovirology Services Core (Core H). The laboratory is available for CFAR prevention science investigators to do assays on specimens from high-risk populations to obtain estimates of HIV incidence (e.g., measurement of antibody by the BED Capture assay, HIV RNA pooling, dried blot spot assays, and other serodiagnostic assays). Dr. Mayer will convene regular meetings of the Prevention Science Investigators to plan joint projects and review data generated by CFAR Prevention Science investigators. Lola Wright, the administrative coordinator of the PSC, will be responsible for meeting logistics and clerical/administrative support for Core investigators, as well as the focal person for information dissemination. Robert Ducharme is the PSC Research Associate who will assist investigators in developing new protocols, conducting qualitative interviews in hard-to-reach populations, and in collecting quantitative data for CFAR pilot studies, and performing HIV rapid testing for hard-to-reach populations. The Prevention Science Core will also coordinate the research collaborations with Fenway Community Health, which serves as a major component of the CFAR Prevention Science activities. Current HPTN and HVTN activities in the CFAR include bilateral collaborations between the Miriam Hospital and Fenway Community Health, including joint initiatives in community education and training in GCP for the conduct of NIH-funded clinical trials. The PSC will be responsible for the coordination of local prevention and behavioral research initiatives emanating from the new Clinical Trials Unit initiatives (i.e. HPTN, HVTN, MTN).
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