Meetings & Events

Purpose:

• Encourage collaboration between social scientists, medical researchers, and technology experts to explore the use of mobile technology to foster adherence to HIV treatment regimens and access to care among substance-abusing populations

Topics Discussed:

• How feasible is it to develop, utilize, implement, and disseminate these technologies?
• What are the potential barriers to adopting these approaches?
• Which technological approaches are the most likely candidates for efficaciously promoting HAART adherence?

Fundamental Take-Home Messages from Talks/ Group Discussions

• Technologies become outdated very quickly. Therefore, crucial to understand the underlying principles behind the interventions
• Leveraging the core essential elements of evidence-based interventions offer the possibility of wide dissemination through technology
  • Adapting interventions to target defined subpopulations (e.g., cognitively impaired substance user) will allow for greater intervention specificity
• To what degree does NIDA/NIH need to start more strongly mandating for open source and interoperable platforms (at a minimum) for federally funded projects?
• Cooperation across sites (minimally) and/or cooperative agreements to support infrastructure for technological intervention development and dissemination efforts (P20s)
• Unprecedented opportunities to intervene in real time and during everyday daily routines and in high-risk situations
• Identifying "science of delivery"/ "implementation science":
  • How to deliver and frame interventions in a maximally effective way?
  • Develop and deliver interventions that are effective across settings (e.g., community health agency, HIV primary clinic, prison)
  • Recognizing the tension between the academic model (incremental) vs. dissemination model (getting product to market for scale-up)

Technology-Based Adherence Interventions for Substance Abusing Populations HIV (R01, with PAS-10-097 & R34, PAS-10-098)

• Purpose: Stimulate research on the determination of feasibility, and pilot testing of development, interventions that utilize technological tools to foster adherence to HIV treatment regimens among substance abusing populations in naturally occurring timeframes
• Funds Available and Anticipated Number of Awards: $1.5 million total costs in FY 2010 and $1.5 million in FY 11 to support 6-9 new projects under this FOA and the accompanying R01 FOA
• Opening Date: April 7, 2010/AIDS Application Due Dates