A new $1.3 million federal grant will address the documented challenges and barriers to the advancement of underrepresented, disadvantaged, ethnic minority, and disabled scholars in the field of community-based HIV/AIDS research.

The five-year National Institute of Mental Health research education grant brings together researchers from UConn’s Center for Health Intervention and Prevention (CHIP), Yale University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), and the Institute for Community Research (ICR) in Hartford to mentor diverse scholars in community-based HIV/ AIDS research.

Principal investigators on the grant are Merrill Singer, a UConn professor of anthropology and CHIP affiliate; Jean Schensul, founding director of ICR; and Barbara Guthrie, an associate professor of nursing at Yale.

“In this country the HIV/AIDS epidemic is disproportionately centered in the African American community, and also the Latino and Native American communities,” says Singer. “Those communities are getting infected, not getting tested, and not getting into treatment at higher rates. They have worse outcomes, including higher fatality rates. Yet people of similar backgrounds are not populating the HIV/ AIDS research arena, for a whole host of reasons that begin long before they get their Ph.D.’s.

“We’re 30 years into this epidemic, and 25 percent of the people with HIV in this country don’t even know they’re infected,” he notes. “We need a varied group of researchers to address an epidemic as complex as this one.”

Recognizing the importance of high-quality mentoring and access to practical experience in setting new investigators’ trajectories for productivity and success, the PIs will recruit a total of 20 underrepresented scholars at the advanced post-doctoral and junior faculty level to participate in an intensive six-week summer institute.

The summer institute will include a research education curriculum, training, and professional development opportunities. It will also develop and roll out a mentoring typology that addresses structural and individual barriers to the advancement of program participants in community-based HIV research; and evaluate the effect and efficacy of the overall program on the scholars and mentors and their respective organizations.

Four scholars a year will participate in the summer institute, taking classes and special group instructional offerings at UConn, Yale, and ICR, and working one-on-one with mentors, based on their research interests. Although they will only be present at CHIP, CIRA, and ICR during the summer, the participants will be considered scholars and will communicate with their mentors for the entire year.

After taking part in the summer institute, some of the scholars will be invited back to CHIP, CIRA, or ICR the following summer to write grant applications with the assistance of their mentors.

Singer says some of the scholars he and his colleagues will recruit may be working at institutions with a teaching, rather than a research, focus. Some may never have had training in grant writing. Most will probably lack a collaborative, multidisciplinary network of researchers like the one behind this grant.

“It’s a relatively small number of scholars we’ll mentor through this grant, but it would be enough to have an impact if all of them develop expertise in HIV/AIDS community-based research,” he says.

Singer says the grant focuses on community-based or participatory research, where members of the target communities have input into the study’s design, because of the strong applied focus of much HIV/AIDS research.

In addition to helping organize the summer institute and recruit participants, Singer will match participants to mentors at CHIP. To date, three CHIP PIs have agreed to serve as mentors.

CHIP will also provide funding for pilot studies. The funds will be awarded through a competitive process similar to that for other CHIP seed grants.

“It’s good for CHIP to be a partner in this post-doctoral training grant,” Singer says. “It enhances CHIP’s national reputation to be seen taking the lead in the training of underrepresented scholars in this field.”