The Vanderbilt-Meharry community benefits from strong programs in HIV/AIDS clinical care, research, and training. Particular strengths include access to a large, diverse patient population through established clinical research and outcomes research infrastructures, electronic databases and specimen archives for translational and outcomes research, accomplished outcomes and epidemiology programs suitable for studying HIV/AIDS, established HIV/AIDS clinical research programs, strength in human genomics relevant to HIV, and recent recruitment to Vanderbilt and Meharry of many accomplished HIV investigators who will expand the scope and impact of HIV research. A clear focus of the Clinical Discovery Core (CDC) is to foster multidisciplinary, high-impact translational and epidemiology/outcomes HIV research at Vanderbilt and Meharry. The CDC will build upon existing strengths to continue developing a program in HIV outcomes research, with an emphasis on training new investigators, collaborations with established investigators, and the study of racial and gender disparities. A long-term goal is to improve HIV clinical research and training capacity at Meharry, which includes its historic mission of training people of color to serve the under-served via care, education, and research. The two primary components of the CDC are The Epidemiology and Outcomes Unit and The Targeted Research Cohorts Unit. With this structure the CDC is ideally positioned to foster research that spans the continuum from bench to bedside to community. The CDC will focus particular effort in three special scientific programs that have great potential for high impact and multidisciplinary collaboration: 1) International HIV/AIDS Research;2) Human Genomics Relevant to HIV/AIDS, and 3) Research in NeuroAIDS. These scientific programs, as well as other CDC activities, will be operationalized through dynamic, task-oriented working groups. The CDC will greatly accelerate the pace of discovery by all disciplines focused on HIV/AIDS in the Vanderbilt-Meharry community, and will ultimately improve understanding regarding pathogenesis, prevention, and treatment of this devastating infection.
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