iTech Retrovirology Research (H-28023)

The UNC/Emory Center for Innovative Technology (iTech) Across the Prevention and Care Continuum

The primary mission of iTech is to conduct youth-focused research both independently and in collaboration with other existing federally-funded networks and individual investigators. The populations of focus for iTech include HIV infected and HIV at-risk preadolescents, adolescents, and young adults up 15- 25 years of age. The HIV infected adolescents and young adults include those perinatally and behaviorally infected.

The broad research agenda of iTech will continue to encompass primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of HIV among youth. iTech fills a unique role among the NIH-funded networks in that it brings together scientific and clinical investigators with the requisite knowledge and experience to design and implement interdisciplinary, developmentally appropriate prevention and management strategies for HIV infected and at-risk youth domestically. This unique role ext ends to the ability to recruit, consent, enroll and retain youth in studies at the Adolescent Medicine Trial Units (AMTUs) that are a keystone element of iTech.

The primary mission is to ensure that iTech conducts innovative, significant, and feasible research with maximal potential public health impact in the areas of secondary and tertiary behavioral prevention studies, therapeutics for HIV-infected youth, and community prevention of HIV- infection in youth. For more information see iTech Houston Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative.

The Section of Pediatric Retrovirology and Global Health provides comprehensive primary and specialty medical care and social services to HIV-infected infants, children and adolescents, and prevention services to at-risk individuals. Pediatric Retrovirology participates in the education of U.S. and foreign health professionals and in clinical research in HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, and operates the Houston HIV center of Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI).