Project Accept a policy changer in fight against HIV pandemic: 3/22

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Project Accept a policy changer in fight against HIV pandemic

by Dawn Brazell
Public Relations

Researcher Michael Sweat, Ph.D., is a patient man. Almost a decade from the start of Project Accept, a study done that was conducted in 34 communities in Africa and 14 communities in Thailand, the results are in, showing how to best approach HIV prevention in the U.S. and stop HIV's spread worldwide.
Sweat shares highlights from the project:

What was the significance of the study?
The study showed that with mobile HIV testing and community mobilization you can get very large proportions of the community in a rural setting to learn if they are HIV infected. This allows people to access life-saving treatment. The study also showed that this kind of large scale testing reduces HIV risk behavior and lowers the number of new HIV infections.

What was our involvement?
MUSC was one of four institutions selected to run the study, together with UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and University of California, San Francisco. I was the principal investigator at MUSC and ran the Tanzania part of the study. This project ran for more than eight years and MUSC received more than $11 million in support from the NIH for the project.

How will this be a policy changer?
There is now a movement to take advantage of fact that we now know that HIV treatment reduces HIV transmission. This means that treatment equals prevention. But this model only works if you can get people to be tested for HIV and get those infected into treatment. The study shows that even in rural areas in Africa it is possible to get large numbers of people to be tested. I would expect that now foreign aid donors will put more money into mobile HIV testing programs. It also demonstrates that in itself, testing for HIV reduces HIV transmission.

What kind of collaboration does this scale of a study require?
The partnership between MUSC and Muhimbli University in Tanzania has lead to many opportunities for MUSC and Tanzanian scientists to learn from one another. The kinds of learning experiences that the project facilitated are really profound and meaningful to all involved. This partnership also helps MUSC in establishing the capacity to do other important research work in Africa and access funding for this kind of research in the future. We are already now starting a new study, and have plans for other projects – and that never would have been possible without the study we just completed.

To read more about the study, visit http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/pr/pressrelease/2013/hiv_testing.htm. To learn more about Project Accept, visit http://projectaccept.org/.

Friday, March 15, 2013

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