Lynette Gillis, M.D.
HIV disparities to be explored at workshop
Disparities in the HIV epidemic will be explored during a two-day workshop for scientists and clinicians in Nashville next week organized by Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Meharry Medical College.
The multidisciplinary workshop will be held Thursday and Friday, Nov. 18-19, at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel, 2100 West End Ave. It includes a dinner session and panel discussion on Thursday. Attendance is free for Vanderbilt and Meharry personnel, but advance registration is required.
Nearly 30 nationally known experts will discuss access to medical care, racial and ethnic disparities and health outcomes among patients infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). They include: William Cunningham, M.D., from UCLA; Valerie Stone, M.D., from Harvard University; Carlos Del Rio, M.D., from Emory University; and Kimberly Smith, M.D., from Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago.
Other speakers include: David Bangsberg, M.D., from the University of California, San Francisco, a leader in studying adherence to anti-HIV medications; Paul Klotman, M.D., and Mary Klotman, M.D., from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and Lynda Szczech, M.D., from Duke University, among the world's top experts on HIV-associated kidney disease; Adaora Adimora, M.D., of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who will discuss her research on sexual networks, social context and heterosexual transmission of HIV among African Americans; Duke's Andrew Muir, M.D., and Kenneth Sherman, M.D., of the University of Cincinnati, who will discuss racial disparities in responses to treatment of hepatitis C virus infection; Cheryl Winkler, Ph.D., of the Molecular Genetics Epidemiology Section at the National Cancer Institute, who will provide an overview of research into how human genomic differences affect HIV pathogenesis; and Warner Greene, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at UCSF, who will discuss a factor produced by the body that can restrict HIV replication.
The workshop is organized by the Vanderbilt-Meharry Center for AIDS Research, the Meharry Center for Health Disparities Research in HIV, and the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance.
For more information, visit www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/DisparitiesWorkshop or call the Center for AIDS Research at 2-6126.