Research aims to improve HIV care and prevention among young men of color
Newswise – Researchers at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have received an $8.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct research to improve HIV care and prevention in a study focusing on Black, Latino and multiracial gay and bisexual young men – a group at the highest risk for contracting HIV.
With the aim of changing the course of the HIV epidemic in the U.S., the Healthy Young Men’s Study (HYM) will investigate use of the latest technologies and biomedical interventions to help prevent new HIV infections in highly impacted communities, and improve health outcomes for young men living with HIV.
Of all new infections in young men who have sex with men, or YMSM, 54% were among African Americans and 22% were among Latinos, according to a 2012 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The HYM study will examine risk factors for HIV infection, as well as barriers to or facilitators of engagement in care and prevention in this population.
“The rate of new HIV infections in this group is extraordinarily and unacceptably high. This is the only group for which there has been no change in either rates of new infection or cases of AIDS,” said the study’s principal investigator Michele D. Kipke, PhD, vice chair of research in the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and director of the Community, Health Outcomes & Intervention Research Program of The Saban Research Institute at CHLA.