application's abstract): This is an application from the Community Consortium to continue as a clinical site of the CPCRA. The Community Consortium is part of the UCSF AIDS Program at San Francisco General Hospital, and has been a CPCRA unit since the CPCRA was first established in 1989. Community Consortium investigators have provided scientific leadership in the CPCRA, and many specific elements of the CPCRA community-based clinical research model were developed in collaboration with Community Consortium investigators and staff. The Community Consortium has participated in 25 CPCRA protocols, and has contributed the largest number of enrollments (2155), the largest number of patients (1704), and the largest number of enrollments onto a single CPCRA protocol (321) of any CPCRA unit. They expect to follow a minimum of 300 patient enrollments per year at any time during the grant period. The Community Consortium has assembled a team of nationally and internationally recognized scientists on faculty at UCSF who have demonstrated strengths in antiretroviral research, HIV pathogenesis, immune function, HIV-associated metabolic disorders and adherence research. Community Consortium investigators have played important roles in the scientific leadership of the CPCRA. They have served as chairs and co-chairs of the science committees and as protocol chairs of five CPCRA protocols. Community Consortium staff have also provided leadership at the national level. The Community Consortium has developed a regional, decentralized community- based clinical research model, with a central operations core based at the Consortium office, and collaborating primary care sites in San Francisco, Alameda and Marin counties. The 12 collaborative primary care sites proposed in this application include six hospital-based outpatient clinics dedicated to HIV care, three community clinics that serve either large numbers of people with HIV infection or underserved populations (e.g., youths, Latinos), and three private practices. Combined, these sites provide primary care to nearly 8,000 patients with HIV infection (47 percent people of color, 10 percent women). Since the establishment of the CPCRA in 1989, the Community Consortium has consistently produced complete and high quality data. The lost-to-follow-up rate has always been extremely low, and is currently zero percent for all active CPCRA protocols.
