CAPS/Fogarty Visiting Scientists and In-Country Research Training Activities

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Investigator: George Rutherford, MD
Sponsor: University of California Berkeley

Location(s): Ethiopia; Kenya; Rwanda; Uganda; Tanzania; Zambia; Zimbabwe; Egypt; Sudan; South Africa; Burkina Faso; Ghana; Nigeria; Senegal; Kazakhstan; China; Japan; India; Iran; Nepal; Cambodia; Indonesia; Viet Nam; Thailand; Philippines; Georgia; Jordan; Croatia; Czech Republic; Russia; Costa Rica; Guatemala; Mexico; Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Ecuador; Peru; Venezuela; Dominican Republic; Puerto Rico; Trinidad and Tobago; Canada

Description

Provides multi-disciplinary training to physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, scientists, and support personnel from selected developing countries in methods relevant to virologic, immunologic, clinical, epidemiologic, policy and behavioral research related to AIDS, HIV transmission, interventions designed to prevent HIV transmission, and implementation of anti-retroviral drug and other treatments to prevent or delay morbidity and mortality in HIV-infected persons. Working with collaborators in each collaborating country, we will identify training needs and set priorities for training that builds on and expands local research and training capacity. Highest priority will be given to providing training to individuals who are or will be involved in collaborative research designed to prevent transmission of HIV via treatment of other STDs and behavioral or structural interventions and other modalities; test the efficacy of new HIV vaccines; examine how best to use anti-retroviral drug regimens and monitor outcomes in resource constrained settings; link treatment with prevention; and improve the prevention and the treatment of TB (including MDR-TB and XDR-TB), malaria, and other opportunistic conditions in HIV-infected individuals. Training is available in a variety of areas, including: planning, managing, and analyzing data from AIDS-related clinical trials and HIV vaccine trials; observational epidemiologic, behavioral and policy research, including study design and data collection, management, and analysis; virology, immunology, serology, and other diagnostic methods related to AIDS/HIV; clinical microbiology related to STDs, TB, malaria, and other opportunistic infections; and the ethical issues involved in human research in general, and AIDS-related research in developing countries in particular. Training occurs both at the participating institutions in the U.S. and in the collaborating countries and will be designed to utilize and strengthen the training and research capacity of collaborating foreign institutions. Training in the U.S. will focus on masters and doctoral degree programs that provide training in epidemiology, biostatistics, policy and behavioral sciences; long term laboratory training; and medium term training in clinical trials/intervention research/operations research. Training in the collaborating countries will focus on having trainees work under the supervision of former trainees, other collaborating scientists, and U.S. faculty resident in country. In instances in which U.S. faculty are in the country for training and supervision of trainees, they will be situated in host institutions conducting high quality, ongoing collaborative AIDS research, particularly behavioral and structural interventions to prevent transmission of HIV; HIV vaccine trials; studies of how best to implement, expand access to, and assess the impact of anti-retroviral treatment and approaches to the prevention of locally relevant opportunistic conditions; studies of how to link HIV prevention and antiretroviral treatment; and studies of how best to "scale up" treatment and prevention programs.