Increased research of HIV/AIDS’ contributions to the social, regional and scientific communities could be dramatic, especially here in Atlanta.
The disease affects more than 40,000 Georgians.
Leading HIV/AIDS research at Georgia State is Dr. Richard Rothenberg, Regents Professor at the Institute of Public Health.
“Seeing how people are related to each other is critical,” Rothenberg said.
Rothenberg came to Georgia State in 2007 after 14 years at Emory University and 25 years at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and has dedicated most of his career to HIV/AIDS and infectious disease research.
“Problems of people — the most disadvantaged people in the lowest socioeconomic situation,” is the focus of this research, according to Rothenberg.
At Georgia State, there are four ongoing projects studying HIV/AIDS that are funded by National Institute of Health grants.
The first project investigates the role of African American churches in preventing or controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS and drug-use. Inner-city Atlantans attending African American churches will be the subjects for this study, which aims to develop future intervention strategies with churches and the community.
Network structures are how people with common factors relate to one another. In a separate project, researchers are looking at patients in Atlanta and Africa to see how HIV/AIDS is spreading through networks, whether that is drug networks or sex networks.
“Seeing how people are related to each other is critical,” Rothenberg said.
Another project looks at HIV patients through networks and attempts to bring those patients to medical treatment.
Rothenberg described the third project as “seek-test-treat-retain’ and is an important part of HIV control.”
The final funded project examines the community connection. Researchers trace HIV patients recently released from jail and help them transition into the community and connect to medical care.
“We are working in an area not commonly addressed by many schools,” Rothenberg said. “We’re out in the streets seeking out people who are at risk.”
There are a few dozen graduate assistants involved in the various HIV/AIDS projects at Georgia State.
“A major emphasis is on the role of students,” Rothenberg said.
Graduate assistants interview patients, conduct research within project perimeters and work to advance the understanding of HIV/AIDS.
Rothenberg is also a mentor to other Georgia State researchers including Dr. Sarita Davis, a faculty member in the African-American Studies department.
Davis is working on a National Institute of Health grant to fund her own research at Georgia State.
What Davis plans to research is how women who have experienced sexual abuse as children communicate to their daughters about survival skills: including the risks of HIV contraction.
“Some HIV approaches have had a limited effect on women with HIV,” Davis said, “and at the end of the day there remains a stigma of taking medication.”
Davis plans to interview mothers and daughters to learn if there is an increased risk of dangerous behavior, negative perceptions of men or what social repercussions are associated with women sexually abused as children and how they teach or communicate to their children.
Davis’s grant is due to the National Institute of Health in February and currently does not have a start date set for performing interviews.
As for the scientific community on the subject of HIV/AIDS, “understanding the dynamics of transmission, and how humans relate to each other and how the virus runs its course,” are major concerns, Rothenberg said.
According to 2010 statistics from the Georgia Department of Public Health, 1,294 new cases of HIV were reported in the state. A CDC survey ranks Georgia 10 of 56 U.S. states and territories in terms of newly diagnosed AIDS cases at 955 compared to 32,992 nationwide in 2010.
