From the Program Director:

On November 11, 2016, we held a half-day Faculty Retreat in the TAC Building. We started out with lunch and a birthday celebration for Dr. Friedland! We had a great turnout considering some of our faculty and staff members were unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts however we hope to have more retreats in the future.

To view photos from the retreat, click here.

Our goals for the retreat were to give brief updates on our current major activities in the areas of research, education, clinical work and community collaborations. In doing so, we hoped to promote programmatic collaboration with each other as well as new trainees and improve our local, national and international impact. A tangible outcome would be to produce an updated version of our Annual Report which would be available on line.

SEVERAL IMPORTANT THEMES EMERGED:

• CLINICAL WORK – Focus on improving HIV testing in the ED; implementing PrEP; treatment of HIV/HCV patients
• EDUCATION – Need for formal faculty development; need for enhancing our use of technology for teaching
• MENTORSHIP AND RECRUITMENT – Need for creating events for trainees to expose them to activities in AIDS Program; need to better use website to link Fellows and trainees to potential mentors in AIDS Program
• BASIC RESEARCH – Focus on Immunology, Neuropathogenesis, Oncology
• CLINICAL TRIALS– Increased role of injectables for long acting ART, monoclonal Abs and vaccines and impact on clinical practice
• IMPLEMENTATION RESEARCH– Focus on decision science including role of networks, providers, personal narratives in influencing prevention and care approaches; promoting integrated care networks in various national and international arenas (HIV/TB; management of substance use disorders, women’s health issues, renal transplantation, promotion of retention in care); promoting collaborative learning environments with multi-disciplinary stakeholders

This is our first edition of the AIDS Program Online Newsletter with Mitzi Perez as our content creator and organizer. Our goals are:

1. Keep everyone associated with the AIDS Program informed of program activities
2. Reach out to others in the broader academic community who might be interested in working with the AIDS Program.

This is a work in progress and is in response to suggestions made at our faculty retreat (see below):

• Maintain a departmental online newsletter with links to relevant resources
• Provide online updates of faculty profiles and program activities
• Create brief video profiles of each faculty member as recruitment tool. We will be contacting you to schedule a convenient time for a video interview.

YALE AIDS Program Faculty Retreat Attendees

Row 1: Frederick Altice / Nancy Angoff / Lydia Barakat / Raffaele Bernardo
Row 2: Dana Dunne / Jennifer Edelman / Brinda Emu / Margaret Fikrig
Row 3: Gerald Friedland / Ritche Hao / Michael Kozal / Priti Kumar
Row 4: Maricar Malinis / Jaimie Meyer / Onyema Ogbuagu
Row 5: Julia Rozanova / Sheela Shenoi / James Shepherd / Sandra Springer
Row 6: Serena Spudich / Richard Sutton / Merceditas Villanueva / Michael Virata
Row 7: Jeff Wickersham / Julie Womack / Heidi Zapata / Alexei Zelenev

The key contact person for our online newsletter is Mitzi Perez.

We hope to update this site in real time therefore please forward any newsworthy items to Mitzi. We will feature different aspects of the AIDS Program on a quarterly basis.

I look forward to what this newsletter can bring to our department in regards to maintaining an ongoing connection with everyone.

Sincerely,
Ditas Villanueva