ACTIVE PROJECTS

Partners AIDS Researchers Assist South Africans With Nationwide ARV Rollout

In an effort to combat the AIDS pandemic at its epicenter, the Partners AIDS Research Center (PARC) is assisting clinics in one of the hardest hit areas of the global AIDS epidemic to develop life saving pilot AIDS treatment programs. Working in the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa, Partners physicians have been mentoring health care professionals on what will be the largest distribution of antiretroviral therapy (ARV) ever undertaken in medical history.

PARC has maintained an active involvement and presence in South Africa since the early 1990s. The center is committed not only to providing scientific expertise to a country devastated by AIDS, but also to providing HIV education and support to persons infected and affected with HIV/AIDS.

Photo by: Paul Weinberg

New Tactics for Controlling Cardiovascular Disease in Developing Countries: India and South Africa

Drawing on lessons learned in control of other complex diseases in resource-poor settings, the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Department of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities (DSMHI) is working to advance cardiovascular disease control in both the US and abroad. With support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), this work includes model prevention and treatment projects, economic evaluation of intervention strategies, and biosocial research on the determinants of cardiovascular epidemics.

The first step in preventing cardiovascular disease is identifying individuals who are at high risk. With support from the Fogarty Center of the NIH, we are developing a cost-effective cardiovascular risk prediction tool for use in developing countries, by identifying risk factors that are easily measurable in resource-poor settings. The tool will be tested in South Africa and India, two countries facing a growing cardiovascular disease epidemic.

Read more about this project.