Thursday, September 11, 2008

Yale adds $11M, 5-year grant to AIDS research

By Mass High Tech Staff

Timed with a report from the Centers for Disease Control about increasing HIV infection numbers in the U.S., the National Institute of Mental Health has awarded Yale University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) an $11 million grant. The grant covers an additional five years’ worth of research on HIV prevention and health services.

The funding will help support CIRA’s research on AIDS behavior analysis, laws and policies, as well as research on the affected groups of women, children, people of color and intravenous drug users. CIRA will also focus the grant to reflect the globalization of the AIDS epidemic by concentrating on research in India, China, South Africa and Russia, Yale officials report.

According to the World Health Organization, 30.8 million adults and 2 million children are living with HIV in 2007. Of those numbers, 2.7 million adults and 370,000 children were newly infected with the disease last year.

Founded in 1997, Hartford, Conn.-based CIRA is the only NIMH-funded AIDS research center in New England. The organization is made up of researchers from 20 unique fields and faculty from seven schools at Yale, including the School of Public Health, School of Management, Nursing School, Law School, Graduate School and Divinity School.