Collaborators

Frederick (Rick) L. Altice is a professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health and is a clinician, clinical epidemiologist, intervention and implementation science researcher at Yale University School of Medicine and School of Public Health. Dr. Altice’s primary research focuses on interventions and implementation science at the interface between infectious diseases and addiction and he has conducted research in several global health settings. He also has a number of projects working in the criminal justice system, including transitional programs addressing infectious diseases, medications for opioid use disorder (methadone, buprenorphine, extended release naltrexone), mental illness, homelessness and social instability. Specific topics include alcohol, opioid, stimulant and nicotine use disorders on HIV treatment outcomes, HIV and addiction treatment, interface with the criminal justice system, and pharmacokinetic drug interactions between treatment for substance use disorders and antiretroviral and tuberculosis therapy. At a basic level, his research focuses on clinical epidemiology, especially in key populations at risk for HIV (e.g., MSM, TGW, PWID, prisoners, sex workers) and development, adaptation and evaluation of of biomedical and behavioral interventions to improve treatment outcomes. His research, however, has evolved and included development and testing of mobile technologies (mHealth) to intervene with key populations to promote health outcomes.  His research is especially concentrated in health services research techniques with a focus on implementation science, seeking to introduce and scale-up evidence-based interventions in numerous contexts. A number of implementation science strategies are underway to examine scale-up of medication-assisted therapies to treat opioid use disorder in community, criminal justice and in primary care settings. Most recently, his work has been augmented through use of decision science techniques to understand and promote patient preferences, including the development of informed and shared decision-making aids. His work has emerged primarily with a global health focus with funded research projects internationally in Malaysia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, and Indonesia. He has participated in projects through the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency, Special Projects of National Significance with HRSA, and the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. He is currently also collaborating on projects with the WHO, UNAIDS, USAID, PEPFAR and UNODC. Current internationally funded projects in dedicated research sites that are being conducted in Malaysia, Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Peru. His research and training sites in Malaysia (2005), Peru (2010) and Ukraine (2005) are dedicated training and research sites for the Global Health Equity Scholars Fogarty Training Program and the Doris Duke International Fellowship program. He is currently the director for two International Implementation Science Research and Training Centers with collaborations between Yale University and the University of Malaya and Sichuan University.

Dr. Azbel is a public health sociologist exploring how medical interventions translate into new settings. They use qualitative methods to unpack the social relations of treatment where drug use and infectious diseases intersect, especially among queer people and people in prison. Their work tackles some of the most stubborn impasses to implementing harm reduction interventions in Latin America, South Asia, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia by generating a space where new forms of treatment are possible.

Since 2006, I have served as Chief Executive Officer of the APT Foundation, a non-profit agency founded in 1970 by members of the Yale University Department of Psychiatry to promote health and recovery for those who live with substance use disorders and/or mental illness. My professional interests focus on identifying treatment gaps in substance abuse/mental health treatment and improving access to those services including services for persons who are incarcerated or recently released from jail or prison. My academic interests and pursuits include large- and small-scale implementation projects that are focused on access to and quality in mental health care and substance abuse treatment services including integration with primary care, and integration of treatment for infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and HCV. My role in these project teams is often as both coach and researcher.  I currently hold a position as an assistant professor in the Yale School of Medicine AIDS program and as a faculty member in addiction medicine.

I am an Associate Professor of Medicine, in the clinician-educator track and Director of the Yale antivirals and Vaccines research program (formerly HIV Clinical Trials program) of the Yale AIDS Program, Section of Infectious Diseases of the Yale School of Medicine. My clinical responsibilities include educating and training medical students, residents and infectious diseases fellows in various capacities in inpatient and outpatient settings; and through structured course work and other teaching sessions. As a faculty of the HIV training track of the Yale-Internal Medicine primary care program and as a faculty of the Human Resources for Health program in Rwanda (2013 to 2019), I have extensive experience with curriculum development, structuring of residency training programs, and mentoring residents and faculty. In Rwanda specifically, I have and still continue to mentor medical residents and junior faculty in quality improvement and clinical research projects that are locally relevant and addressing important infectious diseases-related problems (particularly HIV/AIDS epidemic and antimicrobial resistance). Furthermore, I have facilitated meaningful educational and research collaborations between faculty and trainees across institutions. As the program director of World Bank and HRSA-funded efforts supporting the Liberia College of Physicians and surgeons (LCPS)–run Internal medicine residency training program, I have overseen the selection and deployment of faculty to Liberia, and am responsible for educational programs and activities aimed at strengthening the residency training program. Through an award from National Academy of Sciences / USAID, I have trained Liberia's first-ever Infectious Diseases physician who achieved fellowship of the West African College of Physicians in that specialty in 2022. Overall, my expertise and collective experiences to date have positioned me to design and run successful projects around capacity building in low-resource settings including developing and implementing innovative and robust medical training and research programs for faculty, fellows, residents and students. Since 2017, I have been the Director of the Yale AIDS Program HIV clinical trials program, and a principal investigator on numerous pharmacokinetic, phase 2 and 3 safety and efficacy trials of novel antiviral compounds (HIV, SARS CoV-2). I am also a lead investigator on the international DISCOVER trial evaluating TAF/FTC vs TDF/FTC for HIV prevention among MSM and transgender women as well as PURPOSE-2 trial evaluating long acting lenacapavir for PrEP among MSM, transmasculinizing and transfeminizing individuals as well as gender non binary individuals who have sex with men. I am also funded by NIAID (2023-25) for work advancing HIV PrEP for adolescent girls and young women in Liberia. In response to the COVID pandemic, I have been Yale principal investigator on multiple investigational therapeutic and preventative clinical trials for COVID-19 including remdesivir (now FDA approved), leronlimab and remdesivir and tocilizumab combination therapy as well as the Pfizer/BioNTech and GSK/Sanofi COVID-19 Vaccine trials. IN addition, I am also the PI on multiple ongoing trials evaluating mRNA vaccines for other infectious diseases and vaccines for bacterial infection.

Dr. Sullivan's program of research is centered on individual- and system-level factors that affect the wellbeing of victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), with specific attention to daily processes and micro-longitudinal designs. At the individual level, Dr. Sullivan's work aims to advance understanding of the relationships among IPV and its highly prevalent negative outcomes such as posttraumatic stress, substance use, and sexual risk in an effort to develop preventive interventions that promote safety and resilience. At the systems-level, she conducts IPV research and evaluation within the criminal justice and other service systems. She studies the impact of the system’s response on victims’ wellbeing including the ways in which it promotes or impedes victims’ safety, recovery and resilience. She collaborates with community partners locally and nationally to study the impact of criminal justice system interventions, including being a key investigator on the National Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention Demonstration Initiative, a multi-site evaluation of two interventions to reduce IPV and IPV-related homicide across the United States. She disseminates findings broadly to have the greatest impact including to professionals (e.g., to court-based practitioners through the Center for Court Innovation) and the general public (Cosmopolitan magazine). Dr. Sullivan is a licensed psychologist who has extensive clinical experience with victims and offenders of IPV, providing services in a range of settings from community programs, dual diagnosis programs, inpatient settings, and outpatient clinics to domestic violence shelters, transitional living programs, and community programs.

Tiara C. Willie is a predoctoral fellow in CIRA's NIMH Interdisciplinary HIV Prevention Training Program and is currently working on her Ph.D. in Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. She earned her B.S. in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.A. in Women's Studies at Southern Connecticut State University and. Her master's thesis, My Existence is My Activism: Evaluating the Self-Manifestation of Strength amongst Women Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence, used empowerment theory to examine women's perceived strength and locus of control among community women experiencing intimate partner violence. Her research focuses on building knowledge on gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS from an intersectionality framework. Her nascent program of research explores the implications of individual, relationship, community, and structural-level determinants of gender-based violence on the sexual and reproductive health of marginalized women, domestically and globally. This empirically informed research would be used to construct HIV prevention interventions. Her mentors are Dr. Trace Kershaw and Dr. Jhumka Gupta. Tiara worked as a Research Assistant at the Yale School of Medicine from 2012-2014. In her position, she supported federally funded projects designed to examine individual-level and structural-level factors that impact the health of women experiencing intimate partner violence including sexual risk, HIV vulnerability, and depression. Prior to moving to New Haven, she lived in North Carolina where she was involved in community-based research in the HIV/AIDS service community.