UCLA leading $20 million effort to reduce HIV among youth

A UCLA-led team of researchers has received a $20 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to provide services for adolescents and young adults who have HIV or are at risk for HIV infection, and to study how well those services work.Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus, director of the Global Center for Children and Families at UCLA ’sSemel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, will lead the five-year project, working with teams at Columbia University, the Friends Research Institute, Nova Southeastern University, Tulane University, UC San Francisco  and Wake Forest University, which all are part of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network. The initiative will focus on youth in Los Angeles and New Orleans.“Despite dramatic improvements in the ability to treat and prevent HIV, the HIV rate among youth in America has doubled in the last 10 years,” Rotheram-Borus said. “We want to change the national trajectory of HIV among those most affected by the epidemic: young gay and bisexual men and trans gender youth.”According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV-positive adolescents and young adults have become increasingly likely to remain unaware that they have HIV and fail to adhere to treatment regimens.  The CDC also reports that those who are most at risk for becoming infected with HIV are homeless or identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.For the project, which began in May, the researchers will rec...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news