The Mid-Atlantic CFAR Consortium Implementation Science Consultation Hub (MACC+) provides technical assistance through coaching, group-based mentorship, training, and review to Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) investigators, Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) awardees, health department officials, community stakeholders, and other HIV implementation science investigators. Led by Drs. Sheree Schwartz and Stefan Baral, the MACC+ is funded by the NIH under the national EHE initiative. The Hub seeks to accelerate HIV prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies by providing mentoring and technical support to ongoing and future implementation science (IS) projects and investigators.
A critical component of the MACC+ IS Hub is providing technical support to the Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) awardees, offering mentorship and development opportunities through didactic training, applied learning activities and intensive IS coaching.
“Our big pieces are really trying to focus on mentorship through the fellowship program as well as collaborations across projects and Hubs through the Fellowship, multi-site study and a project assessing community engaged research with awardees and community partners.” said Sheree Schwartz, Principal Investigator at the MACC+ Hub.
The MACC+ Hub leads the inter-CFAR HIV and Implementation Science Fellowship. This fellowship used to be independent but is now offered through the Hub and is an National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded training opportunity in IS for early-stage investigators (ESIs) engaging in HIV-related research. To-date the fellowship has engaged 104 fellows and for 2023-2024 year will select more fellows across the CFAR network, HBCUs and U.S. universities to participate in the mentorship program. (You can learn more about the fellowship here)
“There are many amazing mentors that devote time and dedication to the early-stage investigators in HIV and implementation science,” said Schwartz. “Many of those members come from other funded Hubs and we remain incredibly grateful to them for lending their expertise.”
Challenges when working with EHE funded projects are not unseen within the EHE network. Hubs work year-round to address these concerns with their assigned projects and strategically develop avenues that projects can use to connect, discuss, and advance research aims and EHE goals.
“In partnership with the R3EDI Hub at Yale, we’ve been collaboratively working on an effort in which we collected data from existing EHE awardees to really understand what some of their challenges were from the academic side in terms of conducting meaningful community engaged research.” Schwartz stated.
This information was presented last year by the MACC+ Hub at the Dissemination and Implementation (D&I) Conference, where NIH representation was present. A related paper is expected to be completed soon. The Hub is also interested in the community partner perspective and how to create meaningful community-academic partnerships.
“This process has been a little more complicated,” Schwartz said. “Nonetheless we have received IRB approval and we have the study objective to measure and describe successes and challenges in community engaged research amongst academic and community-based partners.”
With this study, the Hub hopes to understand the challenges, successes, and perceived benefits of community-academic partnership. With the help of the Implementation Science Coordination Initiative (ISCI), the survey for participation has been disseminated to 2021 and 2022 EHE awardees, with findings forthcoming.
You can keep up with the MACC+ Hub and all their work toward ending the HIV epidemic by following the Johns Hopkins CFAR Twitter (@HopkinsCFAR) or by visiting their website here.