NIDA Selects INVEST and INVEST/CTN Fellows

September 4, 2012

Researchers from Ireland and Ukraine have been selected as NIDA INVEST Drug Abuse Research Fellows, and a scientist from Indonesia has been selected as a NIDA INVEST/CTN Drug Abuse Research Fellow.

• Former Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow Tetiana Kiriazova, Ph.D., Ukraine, will spend her INVEST Fellowship working with Jeffrey H. Samet, M.D., M.A., M.P.H, Boston Medical Center. The director of HIV/AIDS programs at the Odessa Regional Charity Foundation “Future Without AIDS,” Dr. Kiriazova is the Ukrainian principal investigator on Dr. Samet’s NIDA-funded project, Linking Russian Narcology and HIV Care To Enhance Treatment, Retention, and Outcomes, and a senior investigator on a Ukrainian Ministry of Health-funded project to analyze the local HIV and tuberculosis epidemics. During her fellowship, she will conduct a secondary analysis of factors associated with participant attrition in a completed randomized controlled trial of an HIV risk reduction intervention that Dr. Samet conducted in Russia. They hypothesize that injection drug use, HIV stigma, HIV disclosure, and depression will be associated with the likelihood of attrition. If this hypothesis is supported, they will suggest ways that clinical research and practice could be modified to minimize attrition in future studies. Dr. Kiriazova spent her 2009–2010 Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship in HIV/AIDS Policy and Prevention at Emory University.
• Jan Klimas, Ph.D., Ireland, has been selected as an INVEST Fellow. He will spend his fellowship working with Dennis McCarty, Ph.D., Oregon Health & Science University. A research assistant at University College Dublin and Cochrane Research Fellow at University of Limerick, Dr. Klimas will extend his research on screening and brief intervention for alcohol use disorders among methadone patients in primary care settings, compare Irish systems of primary care screening and methadone treatment with methods for screening and brief intervention in U.S. primary care settings, and contrast buprenorphine services in the United States with primary care methadone services in Ireland.  
• Vivi Octavia Lubis, M.D., Indonesia, will spend her INVEST/CTN Fellowship with George Woody, M.D., University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lubis is head of the education and research department at Drug Dependence Hospital RSKO Jakarta, where she treats patients in the hospital’s methadone program, counsels patients enrolled in a NIDA-funded study on drug and HIV risk reduction in five Indonesian methadone clinics, and coordinates a tuberculosis treatment program. To assess the impact of new Indonesian laws mandating drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration, Dr. Lubis will study outcomes of 250 patients treated for addiction to amphetamine-type stimulants who enter court-ordered or voluntary therapeutic community versus outpatient treatment programs, focusing on the relationship between outcome, mandated treatment, and the course of psychiatric symptoms.