The Duke/North Carolina Children's AIDS Network {Duke/NC-CAN) Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Unit serves the tenth largest state in population by providing a statewide system of coordinated research efforts and care for HIV infected and exposed children. The hub for the program is at Duke University Medical Center, which has the largest single pediatric HIV clinic in North Carolina, and provides data entry, quality assurance, and grant-related financial management for the other centers in the network. There is a full subunit at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, which provides care and has an emphasis on perinatal protocols. The PACTU also has a Duke-based Travel Team made up of a physician and nurse who travel to satellite clinics at the Carolinas Medical Center (Charlotte), Wake Forest University/Brenner Children's Hospital {Winston-Salem), and Carilion Medical Center for Children {Roanoke, VA). It is planned that another satellite clinic will be added at the East Carolina University Medical Center (Greenville, NC), although at present the Greenville clinic and one in Wilmington, NC, are used to screen patients for protocol eligibility. The Travel Team goes to the satellite clinics to see patients on PACTG protocols, carrying medications and case record forms with them. They return with completed case records and laboratory samples that will be processed at Duke or UNC. Physicians based at the satellite clinics provide the actual medical care and continuity. The UNC Retrovirology lab, supervised by Dr. Susan Fiscus, is one of the core PACTG retrovirology resource laboratories. Members of the PACTU participate in the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group at many levels: as protocol team members {including chairing or vice-chairing 11 protocols), members of administrative committees, and as a site accruing patients.
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