Director: Kenneth Freedberg, MD, MSc
kfreedberg@partners.org
The goals of the Epidemiology and Outcomes Research Program are to build on demonstrated expertise to create a multidisciplinary, collaborative research effort which broadens the scope of the Harvard CFAR substantially beyond laboratory research, individual patient studies and clinical trials. Epidemiology is the study of disease in populations, and Outcomes Research the study of the end results of clinical care, particularly the results that patients care about: quality of life, functional status, costs of care. They are both of major importance in understanding the HIV epidemic in the US and in more resource-limited settings.
This program will bring together persons from each of the CFAR institutions and utilize an array of methodologies to focus on quality of life, cost and cost-effectiveness of HIV care, guidelines development, prevention, HIV testing issues, modeling of clinical trials using decision analysis and value of information research, icluding the value of laboratory monitoring, behavioral studies involving HIV risk behavior, adherence, recruitment and retention into trials, and access to care.
This program is the outgrowth of specific CFAR recruitment efforts that brought Dr. Freedberg to HMS in 2000. He is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Epidemiology and Outcomes Research at the Partners AIDS Research Center. Dr. Freedberg is also the immediate past Chair of the national AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Outcomes Committee and a member of the Office of AIDS Research (OAR) Advisory Board on HIV priorities for fiscal year 2005. He was recruited to HMS from his former position as Director of the HIV Diagnostic Evaluation Unit at Boston University and Boston Medical Center, following a nationwide search.
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