Several School of Public Health faculty—including Professors Mark Lurie, Abigail Harrison, Caroline Kuo, and Don Operario—recently travelled to Cape Town, South Africa for a scholarly retreat with University of Cape Town faculty and fellows in the South African Social Science and HIV Programme (SASH).

With $1.45 million over five years from the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health, Omar Galarraga and other Brown University professors will work with colleagues in Ghana to build the research capacity needed to address the deadly co-epidemics of HIV and tuberculosis.

“Once people get on antiretroviral treatment, STI’s become less prevalent,” said Mark Lurie, assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University and lead author, whose research team included graduate student Kirwa Kipruto. “It’s really the period prior to that that’s especially important.”

Brown University epidemiologist Stephen McGarvey, who has been studying the Samoan pandemic for years, spoke at the AAAS annual meeting Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014, in Chicago.

With a goal to reduce HIV risk behaviors, public health economist Omar Galárraga investigated whether gay men and male sex workers in Mexico City would participate in a conditional cash transfer program that encourages HIV prevention education and regular testing. A new study in the European Journal of Health Economics reports the price that would get more than 75-percent participation: $288 a year.

The National Institutes of Health will fund a new five-year project headed by Stephen McGarvey, professor of community health and anthropology. McGarvey will lead efforts to conduct detailed genotyping of Samoan adults in order to document genetic variation and see whether it can be connected to propensities toward obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has elected Stephen McGarvey fellow for his significant contributions to the life and physical sciences.