October 2020 – Dr. Pitpitan is named Sentinel Site Director for San Diego for the National Drug Early Warning System: https://ndews.org/about/early-warning-network/.
October 2020 – New Diversity-Focused Grant Awarded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse
July 2020 – Congratulations to Dr. Pitpitan for her work leading the strategic planning process to add SDSU to the San Diego Center for AIDS Research Consortium: https://mednews.ucsd.edu/sdcfrsdsu/
August 2019 – Dr. Pitpitan is invited as a panel speaker of “Successful NIH K Awardees” at the National Institutes of Health
Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Jain for accepting a postdoctoral research position at UCSF! https://cfar.ucsf.edu/people/jennifer-jain
Cristina Espinosa da Silva was awarded a Diversity Supplement (3R01DA042666-04S1) to Dr. Eileen Pitpitan’s NIDA-funded R01 in June 2020, which will also form the basis of her dissertation research. Over the two-year funding period, she will examine sociodemographic and substance use-related disparities in HIV behavioral intervention efficacy across international cohorts, specifically men who have sex with men in the United States and people who inject drugs in Ukraine. Cristina’s proposed research will use causal mediation analysis and effect measure modification analysis to better understand how to optimize the implementation of behavioral interventions to reduce HIV incidence among groups disproportionately affected by HIV infection, including substance-using populations in resource-limited settings. Her research will also incorporate advanced epidemiologic data analysis methods including propensity scores, inverse probability weights, and marginal structural models.
In 2019, Amanda Miller was awarded a Ruth L Kirschstein NRSA Pre-doctoral fellowship award (1F31AA028198-01) from NIAAA to fund her dissertation research and provide protected time for additional training. Under the award, which was funded for two years, Amanda aims to gain advanced epidemiologic and statistical training through additional coursework. Her dissertation research aims are to explore how alcohol use and IPV, independently and as co-occurring issues, influence three steps in the HIV care cascade: linkage to care, receipt of antiretroviral therapy and viral suppression. To analyze her research questions, she is performing secondary data analysis, using data from multiple rounds of the Rakai Community Cohort Study, an ongoing HIV surveillance study conducted in Southwestern Uganda.