NIH program provides $22M for low- and middle-income countries to combat HIV/AIDS epidemic

A new NIH program supporting HIV-related research training will provide $22 million over five years for activities in 15 low- and middle-income countries. The Fogarty International Center's HIV Research Training Program is issuing 22 awards, which are intended to strengthen the ability of the grantee institutions to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic, while building expertise in a particular scientific or critical research infrastructure area. Successful applicants proposed a broad range of focus topics including nutrition, mental health, co-infections and various aspects of implementation science, among others.

"These awards, which comprise the first round of funding for this new program, will help scientists and clinicians in developing countries to build much-needed research infrastructure," said Fogarty Director Dr. Roger I. Glass. "The resulting advances will benefit all, providing trainees the opportunity to collaborate with NIH researchers on U.S. government-funded HIV/AIDS initiatives."

Weill Cornell Medical College's award will help train a multidisciplinary group of investigators to conduct HPV vaccine trials and study cervical cancer at the Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections in Port au Prince. A grant to University of Washington will support training at Kenya's largest teaching hospital in implementation science and health metrics, with the goal of improving health care infrastructure. Developing a social and behavioral sciences platform focused on HIV/AIDS care at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Tanzania will be the purpose of Duke University Medical Center's funding. Dartmouth Medical School will also establish a new project in Tanzania, providing training designed to improve the prevention and treatment of HIV-TB coinfections through clinical and operational research. A new initiative examining the role of nutrition and metabolic health in HIV will be established in Namibia by Tufts University.

Additional awards (see full list below) will focus on a wide range of HIV research and treatment issues, including mental health, male circumcision, drug resistance, research methodology, mother-to-child transmission, noncommunicable diseases and management and analysis of datasets. Five institutions are receiving planning awards, much smaller grants that will eventually facilitate new training in Kenya, Peru, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The new program, which is focused on increasing capacity at the institutional level, is a consolidation of two long-standing Fogarty programs, the AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP) and the International Clinical, Operations and Health Services Research Training Award for AIDS TB (IICOHRTA-AIDS/TB) program.

The awards are partly supported by NIH funding partners, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Full Awards - Fogarty HIV Research Training Program

Tuberculosis Research Institute at MUHAS (Tanzania)
Dartmouth Medical School
Principal Investigator: Dr. Ford von Reyn

Research Training Program for Low- and Middle-Income Country Institutions (Tanzania)
Duke University Medical Center
Principal Investigator: Dr. John Bartlett

Fogarty HIV Research Training Program for Low and Middle-Income Countries (Botswana)
Harvard School of Public Health
Principal Investigator: Dr. Myron Essex

HIV-TB Fogarty Research Training Program (India)
Johns Hopkins University
Principal Investigator: Dr. Robert Bollinger

Male Circumcision and Use of Foreskin Tissues for HIV Prevention in UgandaJohns Hopkins University
Principal Investigator: Dr. Ronald Gray

Optimizing HIV Prevention in Ethiopia through Implementation ScienceJohns Hopkins University
Principal Investigator: Dr. Andrea Ruff

Training in HIV-related Non-communicable Disease Complications in MalawiJohns Hopkins University
Principal Investigator: Dr. Taha Taha

Training Program on HIV Diversity and Drug Resistance-Enhancing Research Capacity (Cameroon)
New York University School of Medicine
Principal Investigator: Dr. Phillipe Nyambi

Multidisciplinary NeuroAIDS Research Training to Improve HIV Outcomes in NigeriaNorthwestern University
Principal Investigator: Dr. Babafemi Taiwo

Training Program in Nutrition and Metabolism in HIV (Namibia)
Tufts University School of Medicine
Principal Investigator: Dr. Christine Wanke

HIV Implementation Science Research Training Program (Zimbabwe)
University of California, Berkeley
Principal Investigator: Dr. Arthur Reingold

International Research Training on TB and Other Pulmonary Complications of HIV (Uganda)
University of California, Berkeley
Principal Investigator: Dr. Arthur Reingold

UCLA/China CDC Training Program in Advanced Research MethodologiesUniversity of California, Los Angeles
Principal Investigator: Dr. Roger Detels

Xiangya-UCLA HIV/AIDS Nursing Research Initiative (China)University of California, Los Angeles
Principal Investigator: Dr. Ann Williams

Improving the HIV Care Cascade in Kenya through Implementation Science TrainingUniversity of Washington
Principal Investigator: Dr. Carey Farquhar

Haiti Research Training Program in the Prevention of AIDS Cervical Cancer
Weill Cornell Medical College
Principal Investigator: Dr. Daniel Fitzgerald

Infrastructure Training Program Grant - Fogarty HIV Research Training Program
Developing the OSP at Muhimbili: A North-South Training Collaborative (Tanzania)
Dartmouth Medical School
Principal Investigator: Dr. Richard Waddell

Planning Grants - Fogarty HIV Research Training Program

Enhancing Capacity in HIV Prevention Implementation ResearchAfrica University
Principal Investigator: Dr. Rugare Abigail Kangwende

Building Implementation Science Capacity in HIVMakerere University
Principal Investigator: Dr. Moses Robert Kamya

Designing Research Training for Rwandans in Emerging HIV and Drug TherapyRASD, Rwanda
Principal Investigator: Dr. Eugene Mutimura

A HIV Planning Grant for a Physician-Scientist Training ProgramUniversity of Nairobi
Principal Investigator: Dr. Ruth W. Nduati

Planning a Strategic HIV Population Science Training Grant at UPCH in PeruUniversidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia
Principal Investigator: Dr. Carlos F. Caceres