Overview:

HIV and AIDS remain important challenges to community health, in large part because HIV is concentrated in specific communities, and often in communities with a history of social exclusion and stigmatization.

After decades of research, we still have no cure. If AIDS has taught us anything, however, it is that no community is an island. Health threats to any part of our world are threats to us all. At the REACH lab, we see HIV as an epidemic that reveals the ongoing role of social stratification and exclusion in the making and breaking of disease.

Our work with HIV and hepatitis C research began with research involving agent-based simulation and modeling (“Injection Drug User Network Topologies and HIV Stabilization Dynamics” NIDA RC1 DA028476-01) and “Addressing HCV-related hepatocellular carcinoma: the current and future epidemics” PI Holly Hagan, NYU; NIDA R01 DA034637. More recently we began a field project in Puerto Rico that combines these techniques with original data collection (“Injection Risk Networks in Rural Puerto Rico” NIDA R01 DA037117. In addition, for the last decade we have worked closely with Samuel Friedman, Holly Hagan, and Sheri Deren of the Center for Drug Use and HIV Research in New York City (NIDA P30 DA011041).