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This author had an opportunity to interview Dr. Ruth Greenblatt (WIHS Principal Investigator) about study results and the future of WIHS. Many of you will be happy to hear that the WIHS will be given funding for another five years (December 1997 to November 2002).
AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. RUTH GREENBLATT, WIHS PRINCIPAL
INVESTIGATOR
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Moher: What are your personal goals for the next five years?
Ruth: There are three things that are important to me. The first is that there are very few studies looking at diverse groups of people and many studies are focused on middle-class people. That's what makes this cohort so important. This is especially true because people have the impression that the Bay Area is very affluent and that's just not true. There are people living difficult lives in Northern California--it's just not all mellow and nice. The second thing is that we can prove that research involving women can be as productive
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as research focused on men. The third thing is that the study can really assist many participants to get quality health care. Based upon the personal interactions between the participants of the study and the study staff; this is tremendously important. The study both provides numerous tests and sends the information to providers. The information we give participants, and the encouragement we give participants, including sponsoring advocacy training is all part of trying to keep people in touch with what's going on in HIV. Now that we have treatments that are highly effective in most people, at least access to services and information may become the most important predictor of how people do.
Some of the six national WIHS sites enrolled women who were getting their primary care at that site. Consequently, the women who were WIHS participants at those sites were already getting high quality care. However, in San Francisco we did outreach to attract women who were not receiving primary care. Therefore, we satisfied two of our goals; the first to enroll HIV positive and negative women in our study, and the second to enroll women who did not
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have access to primary care or advisory options concerning their illness.
Moher: What new sub-studies received funding?
Ruth: We got our first installment! One study headed by Ron Stall, a behavioral scientist, will do interviews asking women how they make decisions about drugs and sex. I think this is exciting because it will explore what people are dealing with when making these decisions and how they are able to support their decision.
Another sub-study of a totally different sort will be done by Karen Smith McKune, she is an Ob/Gyn and a molecular biologist who works in a Nobel Prize winning lab. She is researching molecular factors involved in cervical dysplasia--a cervical abnormal change that involves formation of new blood vessels. The interesting thing about cervical dysplasia is that these changes occur very early on, before people develop cancer. This research could lead to new treatments for cervical dysplasia in its early stages.
Another sub-study we're going to do is to look at the virus (Continued on page 6)
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