Taking New Research in HIV Prevention to the Front Lines

Investigators at the Medical College of Wisconsin's Center for AIDS Intervention Research (CAIR) are working to help public health policy makers and front-line community providers of HIV prevention services to implement newly developed HIV prevention programs based on recent research advances.

A project headed by Steven D. Pinkerton, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, and funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, will calculate the costs of implementing HIV prevention programs which CAIR studies have shown to be effective with at-risk groups including women, gay men, adolescents, and drug users. After determining the cost of the programs, mathematical models can be devised in order to estimate the number of new HIV infections that can be prevented through the intervention programs.

By considering both intervention cost and the behavioral changes that reduce individual risk of HIV as a result of the intervention programs, it is possible to determine the cost-effectiveness of the various programs. This will allow policy makers and public health service providers to estimate how many HIV infections will be prevented by adopting the programs, and to make better decisions about how to allocate their limited HIV prevention program resources.

"HIV prevention decision makers need information about both the costs and the effectiveness of different intervention strategies in order to get the most 'bang for the buck'," said Dr. Pinkerton. "This study will help provide this information."

Another new program, funded by the Centers for Disease Control, will provide "how-to" information for practitioners implementing the newly developed HIV prevention programs. Anton M. Somlai, EdD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, will focus on methods that can be used to transfer an HIV prevention intervention found effective in the research arena to service providers in the field.

In previous research, CAIR investigators found that a 7-session, small-group, HIV risk reduction intervention program successfully reduced HIV risk behavior and the incidence of sexually-transmitted disease among inner-city men and women. Results of that study were published in 1998 in the journal Science.

But publications describing the effects of new research-based methods rarely provide enough procedural detail for service providers to actually adopt the new methods themselves. So Dr. Somlai and his team will develop a "user's manual" for the intervention program. Then they will work with health care providers in adopting the program in their own patient care settings.

CAIR researchers see these projects as helping to bridge the gap between advances being made in HIV prevention research, and the actual use of new prevention approaches by health care service providers in the community.

MCW Health News presents up-to-date information on patient care and medical research by the physicians of the Medical College of Wisconsin.