Global Health

Despite the advances in treatment and prevention, roughly 50,000 new HIV infections still occur annually in the Nation. Research, in large part supported by NIDA, has produced a strategy to address this circumstance and break the epidemiological impasse: seek out HIV-infected individuals, particularly those in “hard-to-reach” groups that have minimal contact with the health care system; offer them HIV testing and treatment; and provide support to help them stay in treatment.

NIDA researchers have developed a computer program that motivates and encourages treatment-seeking when an individual is in a primary care physician’s waiting room. Users of the program, called Video Doctor, enter information on a portable device and receive feedback about health risks related to their drug abuse, along with advice, immediately prior to seeing their physician.

Reviews a journal supplement that compiles studies on drug-related HIV transmission, with a focus on injection drug use, in 16 different localities across the globe.

Highlights the NIDA International Program which works to strengthen international research networks, creating opportunities for global research collaboration, training, and scientific exchange.

Reports finding from a study showing that access to antiretroviral therapies, HAART in particular, can improve the health of HIV-infected patients who have a history of injection drug use.

Reports trends in onset of injection drug use to infection with hepatitis C virus in developed countries and notes the influence of prevention efforts.

Remembers Dr. James A. Inciardi, founder and co-director of the Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies and professor at the University of Delaware, who died on November 23, 2009.