In the Social Science Training and Research (STAR) Partnership, faculty from the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health will collaborate with Vietnamese social scientists, including the leadership of Hanoi Medical University's newly founded Department of Social Medicine, to create a national center of excellence in social science approaches to the study of HIV prevention, treatment and care. The STAR Partnership has four components. First, infrastructure development includes: 1) enhanced management and administrative capacity (capacity building in financial and grants management and strategic planning);2) research ethics capacity (via training for the IRB as well as the broader community of faculty and staff);3) research infrastructure (improvements in library resources, computing infrastructure;community-based fieldwork labs;a monthly STAR seminar), and 4) the development of courses in Medical Anthropology, Policy Science, and Ethics for the Department of Social Medicine. Second, STAR faculty will provide interdisciplinary training in policy-relevant social science research to Hanoi Medical University faculty and advanced students and other promising researchers, training 40 fellows in three overlapping cohorts. Third, STAR fellows will gain hands-on mentored research experience in three pilot studies (on masculinity and HIV risk, the social impact of ART scale-up, and the politics of harm reduction). Fourth, dissemination will take place via an annual symposium, support from our high-profile Vietnam Advisory Board, the monthly STAR seminar, publications, and a capstone exhibit on AIDS in Vietnam at the National Museum of Ethnology. Together, the STAR Partnership will support the institutional development of Hanoi Medical University's newly founded Department of Social Medicine. Strengthening ties between Hanoi Medical University and the broader Vietnamese HIV research and policy community, including the Hanoi School of Public Health, the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, the Ministry of Health, non-governmental AIDS research and advocacy organizations, and key members of the international donor community will amplify the regional and national impact of these intensive individual and institutional-level investments.
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