This competitive renewal application for the Alcohol Research Consortium on HIV (ARCH) builds on and extends our very successful administrative and research accomplishments during our initial NIAAA funding period. ARCH is integrated into a well-established, scientifically productive, national HIV clinical cohort, the CFAR Network of Integrated Clinical systems (CNICS), a network of 8 clinical cohorts and over 30,000 persons living with HIV (PLWH) across the United States. This dynamic cohort provides an ideal scientific platform for long-term study of HIV and alcohol through the collection of comprehensive clinical data and specimens as well as uniformly-collected patient reported outcomes. The ARCH consortium consists of the Administrative Core (ARCH-AC), the epidemiological research component (ARCH-ERA), and an intervention research component (ARCH- IRA). In addition, we have embedded a nascent resource core into each of the research components to capitalize on our expertise and expand our capacity in two new and critical areas of high relevance to HIV and alcohol services and research: the Biostatistics Core (housed in the epidemiology grant ARCH-ERA) and an eHealth Technology Core (housed in the intervention grant ARCH-IRA). The overarching goal of our consortium is to improve clinical outcomes and reduce health disparities among PLWH with alcohol misuse through development and testing of tailored interventions (ARCH-IRA) that are informed by real-time data collection and analysis (ARCH-ERA). Specific themes addressed by our consortium include health disparities, precision medicine, implementation science, state-of-the-art biostatistical methodology, and eHealth technology. The ARCH Administrative Core (AC), the focus of this application, is the U24 that provides the infrastructure for oversight, coordination and direction to the consortium, and facilitates the scientific goals of the epidemiology and intervention components of ARCH. The structure includes: an executive committee; a research steering committee which includes a scientific advisory board; key scientific working groups to conceptualize and implement study aims. ARCH-AC is co-led by national experts in alcohol use disorders and HIV, who have over 30 years of combined scientific experience in conducting epidemiologic and clinical research in HIV/AIDS. The AC provides the critical infrastructure to: 1)Facilitate communication, collaboration and integration among ARCH components and investigators, NIAAA collaborators, Scientific Advisory Board, CHAART and other alcohol/HIV consortia; 2)Oversee implementation of the ARCH scientific epidemiologic and interventional aims; 3)Optimize coordination of ARCH resources among the research projects and with outside groups, particularly the data repositories, epidemiologic/ biostatistics support and the investigational expertise; 4)Promote scientific participation of junior investigators new to the field of alcohol and or HIV; 5)Support dissemination of information by ARCH investigators through presentations, publications, web site maintenance and other strategies for public communication.
This competitive renewal application for the Alcohol Research Consortium on HIV (ARCH) builds on and extends our very successful research accomplishments during the initial funding period. The ARCH consortium consists of the Administrative Core (U24AA020801;Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine), the epidemiological research component (U01AA020793; University of Washington) and an intervention research component (U01AA020802; University of Alabama at Birmingham). In addition, we have embedded a nascent resource core into each of the research components to capitalize on our expertise and expand our capacity in two new and critical areas of high relevance to HIV and alcohol services and research: Biostatistics (housed in the epidemiological component) and eHealth Technology (housed in the intervention component). Our ARCH research components and developing cores will enhance and extend our contributions both within ARCH, across CHAART, throughout CNICS, and to the broader alcohol and HIV research and treatment communities.
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