An International Research
Consortium to Maximise
Benefits & Equity of HIV
Treatment & Care Systems

10-12 December 2007, London

An Evidence for Action (EFA) on HIV treatment and care proposal development workshop was held in London from the 10-12 December 2007.  The purpose of the workshop was to provide a forum where consortium members could further develop collaborative research ideas that had been identified as priorities at the annual consortium meeting in July 2007.

There were two groups developing research proposals at the workshop.  The first group was interested in answering questions around the realities, challenges and opportunities for integrating systems of care for TB/HIV co-infected patients in India, Zambia and South Africa.  The second group aimed to develop research to identify the range of outcome measures that are related to a successful anti-retroviral treatment and care programme and to measure how these outcomes relate to a ‘gold’ standard of success e.g. overall survival and suppression of viral load.

The workshop brought together members of primary and secondary EFA partner institutions.  These included:

• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Medical Research Council UK Clinical Trials Unit
• International HIV/AIDS Alliance
• Indian National AIDS Research Institute
• ZAMBART
• Maharashtra Anthropological Society
• South African Medical Research Council

The workshop was structured to allow sufficient time for group work, while also providing a forum to discuss and reflect on different aspects of the grant-writing process.  Professor Shah Ebrahim (former chair of the Populations and Public Health Funding stream of the Wellcome Trust), presented a talk on grantsmanship, Alison Grant and Simon Lewin led discussions on study design, and Nicola Lord shared advice on time and budget considerations within multi-centre studies.  On the final day, Natasha Palmer (LSHTM) and Maryam Shahmanesh (UCL) were invited as external peer reviewers to provide feedback on the proposed research.