The New Orleans Adolescent Medicine Trails Unit will contribute to and support the scientific agenda of Adolescent Medicine Trails Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions. Composed of members of the adolescent care team, the Tulane/LSU/Charity Pediatric AIDS Trails Unit, and the New Orleans Adolescent HIV/AIDS Research Program, the New Orleans AMTU will have had more than eight years' clinical experience with HIV infected youth and participation in multi center clinical research networks. In addition, the collaborating agencies have more than ten-year history reaching out to youth in the community by building services for adolescents and young adults. In support of the initiative's call for a broad array of supporting and direct intervention studies aimed at the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of HIV infection in adolescents and young adults, young people will be recruited to a managerial database of youth who can be contacted for accrual to clinical trails. This will be supported that assess models of prevention such as vaccines, assess to prevention health, skill- building, and other buffers for youth against HIV. Trails exploring effective measures of identifying and linking HIV infected youth to health care, therapies that exploit the immunologic resilience of youth, drug management strategies, and methods of supporting adherence are being implemented in current activities and will be expanded as an AMTU. Finally, studies that investigate the impact of HIV on young people's lives and decision-making with a view to implementing interventions that support youth's resilience under adverse circumstances as well as interventions with salvage protocols for youth who are very ill and may not have many options, are anticipated. The New Orleans AMTU has the individual and organizational capacity to inform, guide, and implement studies proposed by an adolescent Medicine Leadership Group. In addition, this AMTU will strengthen the Adolescent Medicine Trails Network through its own contributions to the scientific agenda and to an understanding of community work and work with disadvantage, hard to reach adolescents.
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