Mount Sinai. US: The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded Don C. Des Jarlais, PhD,
Director of Research, Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical Dependency
Institute, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn
School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, a 2015 Avant-Garde Award. Dr. Des
Jarlais will receive a grant of $500,000 per year for five years to lead
a HIV prevention study in two cities contending with growing heroin use: New York City and Tallinn, Estonia, in Eastern Europe.
The Avant-Garde Awards showcase potentially transformative ideas in
HIV/AIDS research. Dr. Des Jarlais and his team will focus on combining
several interventions proven to reduce the number of drug users who
transition to injection drugs, including heroin. Globally, intravenous
drug use remains a leading cause of HIV transmission. When Dr. Des
Jarlais began his research at Beth Israel in the early 1980s, about 50
percent of injection drug users in New York City were HIV positive.
Today, in part due to programs he helped pioneer, that figure has fallen
to less than 10 percent.
“Large-scale, simultaneous implementation of multiple evidence-based
programs has greatly reduced HIV transmission among persons who inject
drugs,” said Dr. Des Jarlais. “This project will apply a combined
prevention approach to reduce initiation into injecting use. This
approach should not only reduce transmission of blood-borne viruses like
HIV, but also the many other harmful individual and societal
consequences of injecting drug use.”
Dr. Des Jarlais’s research combines the following harm reduction programs:
• The Heroin Sniffer Project is a multi-session psycho-educational
program aimed at reducing the likelihood that non-injecting drug users
will transition into drug use;
• The Break the Cycle project uses motivational interviewing techniques
to reduce current drug injectors from initiating others into injecting
drug use;
• Low threshold substance use treatment provides short-term
detoxification for persons with substance use problems without requiring
a commitment to a long-term treatment plan;
• Couples-based HIV prevention is a series of counseling sessions for
couples in which one person injects drugs, focusing on the interpersonal
dynamics that often lead to both persons injecting drugs.
Dr. Des Jarlais is a member of the HIV Center for Clinical and
Behavioral Studies of Columbia University and Center for Drug Use and
HIV Research of New York University. The research team will include
scientists from Mount Sinai Beth Israel, New York University, Columbia
University and the University of Tartu in Estonia. Anneli Uuskula, MD,
PhD, of the University of Tartu, will lead the Estonia component of the
project.
Dr. Des Jarlais is recognized leader in the epidemiology of HIV
transmission among injection drug users and has published more than 500
articles on these topics. He is also a pioneer in the evaluation of a
variety of harm reduction interventions, particularly syringe exchange
programs, and was instrumental in the development and expansion of these
programs in New York City during the 1990s. In 1989, Dr. Des Jarlais
was jointly appointed by the President and Congress to serve as a
Commissioner on the US National Commission on AIDS from 1989 to 1993.
“This award is an important and well deserved honor for Dr. Des
Jarlais, who has been tireless in his commitment to help patients with
HIV/AIDS through innovative epidemiology research that has already
proven to be beneficial in reducing the spread of HIV transmission,”
said Yasmin Hurd, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience,
Director of the Center for Addictive Disorders, Mount Sinai Behavioral
Health System. “This award also acknowledges the international nature of
Dr. Des Jarlais’s work that has significant relevance to the global
impact of HIV.”