Are you a School of Nursing Faculty Member from the DC CFAR's collaborating institutions? We invite you to join the DC CFAR 101 Session on Mon. Nov. 7 from 10:00-11:00 am ET via Zoom. During this session, you will learn about the program and the resources available to members (mentoring, lab and biostatistics support, and workshops). Most importantly, we will discuss the available opportunities within the CFAR including the Pilot Awards Program – which provides $50K pilot funds on a competitive basis to HIV/AIDS investigators to jump-start the development of their NIH-funded research careers.

Please contact Lorena Segarra to confirm participation and to receive additional details.

A limited number of DC CFAR members have been invited to attend the 18th annual International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC) conference on November 7-9, 2022, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. This year’s conference will focus on adherence to biomedical interventions in optimizing HIV prevention and care continuum. Since online registration is required and complimentary registration for spaces are limited, this will be given on a first-come-first-serve basis to DC CFAR members.

If you would like to attend, please email cfarindc@gmail.com as soon as possible and we will follow up with more information.

We are proud to announce that Us Helping Us, People Into Living, Inc. (Us Helping Us) will be joining the DC CFAR as an institutional partner in November 2022. Us Helping Us has been engaged in HIV research in DC for many years, including partnering on vanguard studies among Black sexual minority men (SMM) such as HPTN 061 and HPTN 073. And, under the leadership of Dr. Ron Simmons, Us Helping Us was a founding member of the DC CFAR Community Advisory Board (now the Community Partnership Council). Dr. DeMarc Hickson succeeded Dr. Simmons as Executive Director of Us Helping Us, currently serves as a co-lead for the DC CFAR Sexual and Gender Minorities Scientific Interest Group and will be joining the DC CFAR Executive Committee.

During the past year, Us Helping Us has received substantial NIH funding for HIV research totaling more than $1M, including two highly competitive awards: a NIDA-funded open-phase pilot study to increase PrEP initiation and adherence among Black SMM (R34DA054870) and a 5-year NIHM-sponsored R01 to identify the impact of racism, discrimination and stigma on PrEP outcomes among Black SMM in Washington, DC and Dallas, TX (R01MH130166).

Representation Matters! This is a landmark event in the history of the DC CFAR as we welcome Us Helping Us, a Black-led non-profit, community-based organization as an institutional member of the CFAR. The Black community bears a disproportionate burden of HIV and other HIV-related inequities in DC and in the U.S., and according to Dr. Hickson, research conducted by Us Helping Us “will be led by culturally congruent minority researchers and help address issues such as medical mistrust, misinformation/disinformation, and limited engagement in healthcare to end the HIV epidemic in the Black community by 2030.”

Please join us in welcoming Us Helping Us to the DC CFAR!

Alan Greenberg, Director, DC CFAR and DeMarc Hickson, Executive Director, Us Helping Us

History of Us Helping Us. Founded in 1985 and later incorporated in 1988, Us Helping Us is a Black SMM-led community-based, HIV-service organization known domestically and internationally for its work at the intersection of community education and mobilization, service delivery, advocacy and community-based research. With the mission to improve the health and well-being of Black SMM, Black transwomen, and other racial, sexual and gender minorities of color in the Washington, DC area, Us Helping Us provides a wealth of co-located medical, behavioral and support services, including PrEP/PEP, STD/HepC treatment, and trauma-informed therapies (website:www.ushelpingus.org). More recently, Us Helping Us began providing HIV primary care to support its robust status neutral approach to ending the HIV epidemic by 2030. 

On October 21, 2022 the DC CFAR Developmental Core hosted the Benchside to Community Virtual Seminar: Episode 2 "HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorders: A Brain Imaging Guided Treatment". The seminar included a presentation by Dr. Xiong Jiang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Georgetown University, followed by a Q&A and discussion with Mr. Moisés Agosto-Rosario, Director of Treatment at NMAC and DC CFAR Community Co-Lead of the Aging and Comorbidities SIG, and Ms. Samia Abdallah, an undergraduate student and DC CFAR CDEIPI Scholar at George Washington University.

Click here for more information.

On October 26, 2022 the DC CFAR Clinical and Population Sciences (CPS) hosted a Conversation Seminar featuring a presentation on developing multivariable prediction models from CPS Core Co-Director, Dr. Sam Simmens. The increasing availability of electronic health records and large research databases (e.g., DC Cohort and MACS/WIHS) has opened up opportunities to develop prediction models useful for clinical shared decision-making, health policy, and other purposes. Dr. Simmens provided a brief, mostly non-technical, overview of different ways of developing and validating these models.