Professor Receives Centers for AIDS Research Grant.
Angela Bazzi, assistant professor of community health sciences, has been awarded a $40,000 grant by the Lifespan/Tufts/Brown Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and Boston University.
The grant will support an exploratory study of the feasibility of giving people who inject drugs access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent the acquisition of HIV.
Most community studies of PrEP have focused on men who have sex with men (MSM). The CDC recently reported up to one in four MSM could benefit from using PrEP—and one in five people who inject drugs.
“But,” Bazzi says, “there’s been much less research on people who inject drugs.”
Supported by the grant, Bazzi and Brown University professor Katie Biello will lead a group of researchers, including Mari-Lynn Drainoni, associate professor of health law, policy, and management, who will serve as CFAR mentor.
The researchers will conduct qualitative interviews in Boston and Providence with HIV uninfected people who inject drugs, and with healthcare and social service providers and other key informants working with that population.
The Lifespan/Tufts/Brown CFAR, one of the NIH Centers for AIDS Research, is a joint research effort between Tufts and Brown and their affiliated hospitals and centers. The grant supporting this study comes from a collaboration between BU and Lifespan/Tufts/Brown, with the application requiring primary investigators from both.