Cores and Leadership

Administrative Core

The Administrative Core provides scientific and programmatic leadership, management, strategic/fiscal management for the center. This core plays a major role in facilitating cross-core activities to ensure synergy across cores and liaising with other resources at the University of Miami.

This Core is led by Steven Safren, PhD (Director), Daniel Feaster, PhD and Deborah Jones Weiss, PhD (Co-Directors).

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Developmental Core

The Developmental Core provides the mechanisms for funding pilot projects consistent with the center aims to maximize the chances for later NIH-supported high-impact HIV/AIDS mental health science. This Core takes the lead in ensuring dynamic and supportive mentorship, and capacity-building for early-stage investigators, working also with the University of Miami Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) to include perspectives at the interface of behavioral and biomedical sciences. The Core also offers pre-submission peer-review for both external (NIH) and internal (Developmental Core) grant proposals and for scientific publications.

This core is led by Victoria Behar-Zusman, PhD (Core Director), Roger McIntosh, PhD (Core Co-Director), and Viviana Horigian, MD, MHA (Core Co-Director).

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Mental Health Disparities and Community Engagement (MHD-CE) Core

The Mental Health Disparities and Community Engagement (MHD-CE) Core promotes research on HIV-related mental health disparities by providing expert consultation on intervention development with diverse populations, culturally competent assessment measures and equitable human participant’s research with disenfranchised populations. This core oversees two “consent-to-contact” databases for participant recruitment: one for community members at risk for HIV and the other for the people living with HIV and in care at the University of Miami/Jackson Health System Adult HIV clinic. This core also leads the CHARM Community Advisory Board and all community engagement activities, which are central to the Center’s work.

This core is led by Sannisha Dale, PhD (Core Director), Allan Rodriguez, MD, and Hansel E. Tookes, III, MD, MPH (Core Co-Directors). 

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Methods Core

The Methods Core provides expertise in research design, statistical analysis, qualitative and mixed-method research, and data management. This core is creating a data repository and unified data architecture to optimize users’ ability to access formative data as well as engage in resource sharing. It supports the Mental Health Disparities Core by managing the technical aspects of and access to the two consent-to-contact databases as well as the Shared Instrument Library.

This core is led by Daniel Feaster, PhD (Core Director), Raymond Balise, PhD, and Joseph De Santis, PhD (Core Co-Directors).

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Equitable Implementation Science (EIS) Core

The Equitable Implementation Science (EIS) Core aims to support research on equitably implementing and disseminating evidence-based interventions (EBIs) to reach communities who could most benefit. The Core’s emphasis is on training underrepresented minoritized researchers, individuals interested in working with communities experiencing HIV and MH disparities, and established investigators ready to transition their research from efficacy/effectiveness to IS, while simultaneously engaging stakeholders in this process to ensure the results of this work are impactful. 

This core is led by Guillermo "Willy" Prado, PhD (Core Director), Audrey Harkness, PhD, and Mariano Kanamori, PhD (Core Co-Directors).

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CHANGE T32 Leadership

To see leadership for our CHANGE T32 Training Program, please see the CHANGE website.