Hosted by the Department of Epidemiology and Department of Social Behavioral Sciences
The New York City HIV epidemic among persons who use drugs (PWID) was the first such epidemic, having started in the mid-1970s. It remains the world’s largest HIV epidemic among PWID, with over a hundred thousand cases of HIV infection. The first cases of AIDS among PWID in New York were noted in late 1981, and approximately half of the PWID population in the city were already infected by then. It took a decade of prevention efforts, which were up against a resistance to prevention efforts, to establish syringe exchange programs and bring the epidemic under control. This is a public health story of fear, multiple stigmatizations, heroism, activism, advocacy, duplicity, and research.
In this presentation, Don Des Jarlais will discuss some of his findings from over 40 years of HIV/AIDS research among PWID. He is PI of the “Risk Factors” study (R01DA003574), which was instrumental in tracking the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City. This study has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse since 1983 and is the longest continuously funded study on HIV/AIDS in persons who use drugs. He has conducted HIV/AIDS research nationally and internationally (in over 20 different countries). He has served as a consultant on these issues to the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and served as a Commissioner on the U.S. National Commission on AIDS. He has published articles on this phase of the epidemic in the Lancet, JAMA, NEJM, Science, and Nature.