CIRA Staff Rewarded with Renewal of Funding



	Representing Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS in this photo are (left to right): Leif Mitchell, Community Research Core, Gai Pollard, Administrative Core, Pete Donohue, Administrative Core, and Jon Atherton, Development Core.

Dedication takes on added meaning when you work in a unit that annually relies on federal funding. Take CIRA, Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, where staff comprising six cores provide infrastructural support to almost 70 research and training grants and more than 50 affiliated scientists. This summer, as the new fiscal year began, Gai Pollard, Center assistant director in the administrative core, was facing the very real possibility that there would be no grant monies for the staff.

"It was a very tenuous situation for us," says Pollard. "This is why I always say I work with such a fine group of heroines and heroes. Living under this kind of funding is a constant battle to maintain staff morale as we are half the staff we were three years ago. Those of us who have stayed take pride in the work we've done to insure the continued support for HIV prevention research at Yale University."

Uncertainty lessened when word came that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) would be supporting CIRA for another five years of HIV prevention and health services research—an $11 million grant that, as the Yale Bulletin & Calendar recently noted, followed on the heels of a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that revealed higher estimates of new HIV infections in the United States than previously calculated, and that emphasized the need for more rigorous study interventions for HIV prevention domestically and abroad.

Established in 1997, CIRA is one of eight HIV research centers in the United States funded by the NIMH and the only NIMH-funded AIDS research center in New England. Currently located in the Yale School of Public Health, CIRA brings together scientists from 20 different disciplines and three institutions—Yale University, Hartford's The Institute for Community Research, and the University of Connecticut's Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention. Yale faculty from the School of Public Health, School of Medicine, School of Management, Law School, Graduate School, School of Nursing, and Divinity School are also CIRA participants .

Led by Director Paul Cleary, principal investigator of the project, Deputy Directors Jeannette Ickovics and Brian Forsyth, and Executive Director Elaine O'Keefe, CIRA is a team of research support staff who are part of six Cores: Administrative, Development, Interdisciplinary Research Methods, Community Research, Clinical Health Services Research, and Law, Policy, and Ethics. Together they provide a solid foundation for the scientists whose research seeks to solve the AIDS crisis at home and in the world at large.

Staff dedication is annually rewarded during AIDS Science Day Conference at Yale, which highlights the research being conducted at Yale, ICR, and CHIP. Drawing Yale students, faculty, staff, and those living with HIV/AIDS in the New Haven community, the event often reinvigorates staff and reminds them why they stay and persevere.

"When the funding of CIRA was uncertain, the staff were truly inspiring," says Cleary. "Even though the future of their jobs was uncertain, they worked harder than ever to sustain the work that is so important to preventing and reducing the impact of HIV infection. Due to their dedication and hard work, CIRA has survived and is more vibrant than ever."