Upcoming Events

• Most of our events take place in the McKusick Conference Room on the 13th floor at 50 Beale Street, in downtown San Francisco, unless otherwise noted. [Directions to CAPS]
• RSVP to Leslie Roos if you would like to attend. You will need to check in at the security desk upon arrival if you are coming from outside of 50 Beale St.

Speaker: Ariane van der Straten, PhD, MPH

Differential adherence to study product may be one explanation for the conflicting findings from recent clinical trials of tenofovir products. Dr. Ariane van der Straten will explore the current state of science regarding the measurement of adherence in PrEP and microbicide trials and their contribution to understanding outcomes in biomedical prevention trials.  She will discuss the panoply of tools we have to measure adherence including self reports, qualitative methods, electronic monitoring systems, and biomarkers, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each, as well as a way to integrate these tools to provide a better understanding of product use, to assess efficacy of adherence interventions, and to target adherence interventions in the context of ongoing clinical trials. She will use examples from several trials she conducted or participated in, including the MIRA trial, the MTN 001 and 003 trials, as well as IPM gel and ring trials conducted in the US and Africa.

Ariane van der Straten, PhD, MPH, is a senior research scientist and director of the Women’s Global Health Imperative (WGHI) within RTI, and Associate Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She conducts behavioral and biomedical HIV prevention research in the U.S. and Africa, with a focus on female-initiated methods and adherence-related issue in the context of biomedical prevention trials.

12:00 – 1:00 PM

50 Beale/13^th floor/McKusick Conference Rm.

Presenter: Shelley N. Facente, MPH

Ms. Facente will share the results of an assessment of HIV prevention capacity-building needs in San Francisco. This assessment was completed in late 2011 through qualitative interviews with HIV prevention professionals from the HIV Prevention Section of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, members of the HIV Prevention Planning Council, service providers in community-based organizations, medical providers at SFGH and community clinics, and representatives from training agencies and capacity-building assistance (CBA) providers. This assessment was conducted for the San Francisco Department of Public Health in order to better understand and meet the capacity-building needs of HIV prevention providers in this time of extremely limited resources.

Shelley Facente, MPH, is the owner of Facente Consulting, a small public health consulting firm that specializes in HIV prevention and public health program development.  Ms. Facente was trained in sociology at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY, and received her Master of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley. It was then she began work for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, assisting community-based organizations to plan and implement rapid HIV testing programs. In 2009 she launched Facente Consulting, and has since had clients as varied as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, CAPS and UCLA CHIPTS, Health Initiatives for Youth, Better World Advertising, and dance4life international.

12:00 – 1:00  PM

50 Beale Street/13^th floor/McKusick Conference Room

Héctor Carrillo and Amanda Hoffman will present findings from Project Teal, their sociological study of heterosexually-identified men who have bisexual practices. HIV prevention programs have tended to think of these men as pre-modern, uneducated, secretive, in denial about being bisexual or gay, and hard to reach. Often they are imagined to be primarily African American or Latino. This study problematizes those assumptions. It investigates the logics that inform these men’s own sexual interpretations and analyzes their implications for HIV prevention.

Héctor Carrillo is Associate Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. Previously at CAPS and San Francisco State University, he has conducted HIV prevention work and social science research on sexuality and HIV for 25 years. He is the author of the award-winning book The Night Is Young: Sexuality in Mexico in the Time of AIDS, and he has studied the sexualities and HIV risk of Mexican gay and bisexual immigrants.

Amanda Hoffman is the coordinator of Project Teal with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. She began researching straight MSM in 2009 while obtaining a Master’s degree in Sexuality Studies from San Francisco State University. Her thesis project, which she worked on with Héctor Carrillo, was titled “‘I’m gay, for Jamie’: Heterosexual/Straight-Identified Men Express Desire to Have Sex with Men.”

12:00 – 1:00 PM

50 Beale/13th floor/McKusick Conference Room

Presenter:  Hetta Gouse, PhD  Dr. Hetta Gouse will present current research being conducted at the Tafelsig Matrix clinic, Cape Town, South Africa. She will discuss neuropsychological outcomes in this methamphetamine using population, as well as reward anticipation as measured on a monetary incentive delay fMRI task which contrasts reward and neural events between meth users and non-meth users. She will further discuss preliminary findings related to HIV prevalence.

Hetta Gouse is the senior neuropsychologist and project manager for the neuropsychology division of the GSH-HIV Mental Health Group. Her research focuses on HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders and cognition in methamphetamine users.

12:00 – 1:00 PM

50 Beale/13^th floor/McKusick Conference Room