In an effort to eliminate AIDS in East Africa, a consortium involving UC Berkeley researchers received a $23 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for a research program.
Established in 2012, the Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health, or SEARCH, consortium is a joint effort between UC Berkeley, UCSF and Makerere University. Other collaborators in the SEARCH Sapphire program include institutions from Kenya, Uganda, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and London, as listed in a UC Berkeley School of Public Health article.
“I would say the overarching goal of this consortium is ambitious, but it’s to end the HIV epidemic and improve community health,” said Maya Petersen, a head of SEARCH and associate professor at the School of Public Health. “This has been a large consortium over many years, and we’re really just trying to be part of the solution moving towards the end of the HIV epidemic, as well as integrating the lessons that we’ve learned from the HIV epidemic to improve community health more broadly.”
SEARCH previously had multiple findings regarding HIV prevention and treatment for individuals in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the School of Public Health article.
The SEARCH Sapphire program follows a previous study in which researchers produced and evaluated a patient-centered and community-based approach to providing HIV testing. The patient-centered model involved flexibility in hours and services, as well as “meeting patients where they’re at,” according to Petersen.
Petersen added that the consortium took input from the community during the prior study to understand how it could best incorporate not only HIV services in rural Kenya and Uganda, but also provide screenings for other diseases, including high blood pressure and diabetes.
“What we saw in the first study was a range of important community health benefits to providing this patient-centered care with immediate antiretroviral therapy in the context of having tested a whole community for HIV together,” Petersen said. “In this second study, SEARCH Sapphire, what we’re really looking to do is build on those lessons from the first study and ask, ‘Who is still being left behind?’”
For SEARCH Sapphire, Petersen said the consortium will look into how tools, such as a treatment called preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can be best used and distributed to communities. According to Petersen, PrEP can be used to help prevent individuals from being infected with HIV.
Petersen said she is excited to see how the consortium will combine lessons from the field and work from “outstanding” researchers to improve care and prevention.
“We really need to do that in order to take these next substantive steps towards controlling the HIV epidemic, so I’m excited about this opportunity to do that,” Petersen said.
