A Unified Front

HIV/AIDS research at Harvard is, currently, a lot like your favorite rock supergroup. Individually, it’s rich, talented, and prolific; together, it’s a bit dysfunctional.

However, unlike many rockstars, Harvard has acknowledged its weaknesses. Much like the drummer who checks himself into rehab, the University has recognized that it needs help, in the form of the Harvard University Program on AIDS (HUPA).

The nascent program, which is managed under the three-year old Harvard Institute for Global Health (HIGH), is poised to facilitate collaboration and interdisciplinary HIV/AIDS research and education among the disparate schools of Harvard University.

UMBRELLA NEEDED!

But HUPA’s mission is much easier said than done. The Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) often have similar inspiration and initiatives, but encounter cumbersome obstacles to cooperation.

Executive Director for HUPA Thomas A. La Salvia gives an example of a case where two separate research teams—one HSPH, one HMS—were both working in South Africa. The two groups were in the same country studying the same topic. But, for a while, neither had any idea that the other existed.

“Harvard is a very big place with lots of amazing activities and programs,” says La Salvia. “I think that the barriers to people working together here are really logistical and administrative, not because people don’t want to.”

La Salvia notes that Harvard has the unique challenge of overcoming institutional barriers more fundamental than those younger, more spry universities face.

But with a pressing global health crisis such as AIDS, division and specialization are insufficient. According to Harvard Asia Center associate Dr. Lincoln C. Chen, a member of HUPA’s faculty steering committee, “AIDS as a thread and as a human phenomenon is intrinsically interdisciplinary. Because there are so many dimensions of the epidemic, it can be highly focused in one discipline, but it still must be synthesized into a holistic picture.”

This is where integrative organizations such as HUPA enter the picture.

IF YOU FUND IT, THEY WILL COME

The star-studded 18-member HUPA faculty steering committee is a testament to the Harvard medical community’s eagerness to combine forces.

Chaired by Dr. Paul E. Farmer, professor of social medicine at HMS and founding director of Partners in Health (PIH), the committee includes PIH cofounder Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the head of the department of social medicine at HMS and a former director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department; professors Dr. Myron E. “Max” Essex and Dr. Martin S. Hirsch, pioneers in HIV/AIDS research; and Dr. Chen.

The committee is particularly marked by its disciplinary diversity, with professors from fields as diverse as pediatrics and economics.

One goal of a consolidating effort such as HUPA is to better allocate the limited resources available for HIV/AIDS researchers.

“We’re in a new environment when funding is getting more difficult to come by,” says HMS professor Dr. Bruce D. Walker. “I think that the whole nature of research is gradually changing certainly related to HIV and AIDS. My feeling is that we need to bring people together at a place like Harvard...it is a solvable problem but it will take more resources.”

HUPA already has plenty of funds in its coffers. In 2005, then-University President Lawrence H. Summers established a $3 million fund along with the organization. The AIDS Innovative Research Fund is specifically aimed to foster interdisciplinary HIV/AIDS research in Botswana, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania, four African countries devastated by AIDS.

HUPA has also contributed to the expansion of the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research from its home at HMS to the broader Harvard community. The fund is already making an impact, and will help to finance undergraduate research fellowships for summer 2007.

IT’S FOR THE KIDS, TOO

A principle objective of HUPA is fostering interdisciplinary global health education for a new generation of researchers. As the perennially-neglected bass guitarist of the Harvard AIDS research supergroup, HUPA has its sights trained on Harvard College.

HIGH’s website cites new global health-related freshman seminars and undergraduate courses as major advancements. The organization also hopes to establish a secondary concentration in global health by spring 2007.

HUPA aims to connect undergraduates with professors across the campus, and expose them to research opportunities in the field. This spring term a group of College students will study abroad in Botswana, working with the HSPH Aids Initiative (HAI) and gaining valuable lab experience in the field of HIV/AIDS research. The Botswana-Harvard Partnership has existed since 1996, but this spring marks the first time that research opportunities will be open to undergraduates.

Essex, chairman of HAI and professor of infectious disease, and also a member of the HUPA faculty steering committee, is excited about this new development. “I think it is important for medical campus-based people to help in the process of educating undergraduates and make more available opportunities for training and research in AIDS labs,” says Essex. “I would say that from my vantage point, the people that have benefited most from the existence of HUPA are the Cambridge-based students, or others who may not have as much access to the medical community otherwise.”

Harvard AIDS Coalition President Matthew F. Basilico ’08 thinks that experience in the field may be just what undergraduates need. “The development of summer programs and study abroad programs is really crucial,” says Basilico, who spent summer 2004 in Haiti with PIH.

But the Social Studies concentrator thinks that some of the new HUPA-related undergraduate programs may not have such a positive effect: students interested in global health may feel pressured to veer away from a more interdisciplinary liberal arts education.

“Implementing health interventions in most of the places we’re talking about involves a whole myriad of issues that go well beyond health,” Basilico says. “...The worry is that if there’s less of that [liberal arts] foundation, we’re going to have less people looking at the big questions.”