Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative

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Project Summary This is the Baylor College of Medicine's re-competing research training application for funding under Program Announcement PAR-10-219, AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP). The Baylor College of Medicine International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) at Texas Children's Hospital was established in 1996 with a goal of improving the health and lives of HIV-infected children and families globally through expanded access to HIV/AIDS care and treatment, health professional education and training and clinical research. BIPAI seeks through its AITRP to develop collaborative international research training activities that will enhance sustainable research capacity in partner countries hard hit by HIV/AIDS. The ultimate goal of our activities is to inform the prevention, care and treatment of HIV-infected children and families, thereby improving health and lives and catalyzing expanded access to health-restoring and life-prolonging care and treatment. The primary focus is operational research related to the care and treatment of pediatric HIV/AIDS. This application requests support for the renewal, enhancement, and expansion of our AITRP. We are requesting funding for a total of six long-term trainees at any given time. This increase in research training capacity will be critical to fulfilling our commitments to partner institutions and governments for capacity building activities. It is difficult to overstate the catalytic role that AITRP funding has had in BIPAI's development over the past ten years. Baylor's AITRP serves an absolutely essential role in building the research capacity that will help to sustain the BIPAI Children's Clinical Centers of Excellence Network over time. The past five years in particular have been characterized by a blossoming of the research enterprise within the BIPAI Network, providing a rich training environment for current and future AITRP scholars. The challenge and opportunity exist now to harness these phenomenal resources to scale up and inform the prevention, care and treatment of hundreds of thousands of HIV- infected children, impacting millions of young lives across the globe.