Petrelis Files

Feds Paid for 11 SF DPH
Staffers to Attend AIDS Confab

With continuing deep budgetary cutbacks at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and reduction of many services, including HIV/AIDS programs, I was curious if any city dollars would be spent to send DPH staffers to the International AIDS Conference in Washington.

DPH spokesperson Eileen Shields said in an email that eleven staffers would attend and that no city funds were being used for this purpose. This was good news, but who I asked Shields who was paying for the trips. Various federal health agencies are picking up the tab via grants to the department, she said and she provided me with the names of the eleven staffers, along with the titles of their projects:

1) Moupali Das -- NIDA, "Project HOPE: Hospital Visit as an Opportunity for Prevention and Engagement"

2) Nicholas Moss -- NIDA, "Project HOPE: Hospital Visit as an Opportunity for Prevention and Engagement"

3) Phillip Coffin -- CDC, "Project ECHO: Reducing HIV Risk among Episodic Substance-using MSM"

4) Erin DeMicco -- NIDA, "Project HOPE: Hospital Visit as an Opportunity for Prevention and Engagement"

5) Tim Matheson -- NIDA, "Project HOPE: Hospital Visit as an Opportunity for Prevention and Engagement"

6) Milo Santos -- CDC, "Project ECHO: Reducing HIV Risk among Episodic Substance-using MSM"

7) Tracey Packer -- CDC, Evaluation and Data Management grant

8) Taylor Maturo -- NIDA, "Project HOPE: Hospital Visit as an Opportunity for Prevention and Engagement"

9) Susan Buchbinder--NIH, Leadership Group for a Global HIV Vaccine Clinical Trials Network

10) Jonathan Fuchs--NIH, Leadership Group for a Global HIV Vaccine Clinical Trials Network

11) Albert Liu--NIH, Chemoprophylaxis for HIV Prevention in Men 

A longtime research watchdog attending the conference shared these comments with me, in response to questions I raised regarding any problems with the federal government subsidizing the travel and related costs of SF DPH staffers. He said:

I'd almost rather have it come out of pharma's pocket, but they really don't fund much prevention work. 

I think the bigger story is how many people are [the federal agencies] doing that for, both domestically and internationally. They usually link it with investigator meetings around the conference, so at least the flight does double duty. I'm sure they'll argue that it is important to both disseminate the knowledge and for the researchers to be exposed to other ideas. There is some validity to that, but for how many? 

One untalked about issue is that CDC is one of the sponsors of the conference and sits on panels that decide what abstracts are accepted for delivery or posters. So they are essentially evaluating their own research activity and decide who will get attention and to attend the conference. Peer review is very incestual. 

Good points, and I agree that independent review of HIV/AIDS research and abstracts can all too easily be compromised.

There will be a report-back from the conference by Bay Area researchers on August 22 at the UCSF Mission Bay campus, but none of the DPH folks who went to the conference are listed as presenters. The report-back will take place in the Genentech auditorium. Seeing that pharma name associated with UCSF reminds of how incestuous things can get between a drug company and a research university. The flier above contains more details on the meeting next month.