Dr. Metzger is Research Professor and Director of the HIV Prevention Research Division in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1989, he and colleagues from the Center for Studies of Addiction have been conducting AIDS-related longitudinal studies of injection and non-injection drug users.
Dr. Metzger’s research division has developed innovative community-based strategies for recruiting and retaining individuals at high risk of HIV infection into longitudinal studies of HIV prevention interventions. A primary objective of this work has been to provide valid and reliable data that can increase understanding of the public health impact of participation in substance abuse treatment. Currently, his work involves testing the safety and efficacy of behavioral and biomedical prevention interventions, including preventive HIV vaccines, agonist treatment strategies and drug counselling interventions in both domestic and international trials. Dr. Metzger is principal investigator for the NIAID-funded HIV Prevention Clinical Trials Unit in Philadelphia and the Director of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Core of the Penn Center for AIDS Research. Over the past eight years, as Protocol Chair, he has led the multi-site trial of buprenorphine/naloxone being implemented in four sites in Thailand and China, and for the past three years, he has been principal investigator of an R01 examining the impact of drug and risk counselling being implemented in five methadone clinics in Jakarta, Indonesia.