News

A message from The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP)

Greetings!

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) is accepting applications for the 2018 Prevention Internship Program.

The Prevention Internship Program, a component of SAMHSA/CSAP’s Prevention Fellowship Program, invites qualified individuals with strong interest in substance abuse prevention and behavioral health, for a 5-month paid internship in participating Tribes and Tribal Organizations throughout the United States. (Visit the application Web site at www.seiservices.com/SAMHSA/csap/preventionfellowship for a list of participating locations.)

16th International Symposium on Viral Hepatitis and Liver Disease Global Hepatitis Summit 

Toronto, Canada, June 14-17, 2018

Congress registration will open October 2017.

On Wednesday, October 4, 2017, UsAgainstAlzheimer's held a National Summit in Washington D.C. Veronica Miller, PhD, the Executive Director of the Forum was one of the panelists.

 The Opening Session Panelists from left to right: Nancy Brinker (founder of Susan G Komen), The other panelists are Rita Carreon (hidden) – Institute for Hispanic Health UnidosUS, Wade Henderson (Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights), Veronica Miller (Forum for Collaborative Research), Isabell Sawhill (Brookings Institution/ National Campaign to Prevent Teen and unplanned pregnancy) & Mike McMurry (Former White House Secretary)

On behalf of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s and all those who attended our National Summit events last week, I write to thank you for the perspectives and insights you shared with all of us as a panelist for our opening session, Growing the Alzheimer's Movement: Learning from Others.

A message from the Social Entrepreneurship for Sexual Health (SESH)

Deadline to submit: 10 November 2017

The purpose of this call is to gather information related to health challenge contests – defined as open calls to solicit community input in order to improve public health. Descriptions of case studies, experiences organizing contests, and evaluation examples are being solicited. These cases will be reviewed by a panel based on clarity of model, effectiveness, promotion of equity, and potential for learning. Exceptional cases will be included in a global toolkit on challenge contests for health.

A message from The Office of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Policy

Richard Wolitski, PhD and Corinna Dan, RN, MPH
Office of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Policy
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The Office of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Policy (OHAIDP), in collaboration with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the HHS Office of Minority Health (OMH), is pleased to announce the launch of a new joint initiative: the Hepatitis C Medicaid Affinity Group.  The Hepatitis C Medicaid Affinity Group aims to increase the number and percentage of Medicaid patients diagnosed with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection that are successfully treated and cured. Read about this new initiative.            

At the PSC Partners Seeking a Cure 2017 Annual Conference, PSC Partners interviewed several experts, which including the Forum's Executive Director, Veronica Miller, PhD. In this interview, Dr. Miller discusses her background as a clinical researcher, virologist and immunologist and highlights the importance of the PSC Forum. She states,"the aim of the project is to bring all of the different scientists together, from all the different stakeholders to come to a consensus on what it takes to develop new diagnostics and drugs and establish enough collaboration to make the whole system more efficient." PSC is the Forum's most recent project.

For more information on PSC Partners Seeking a Cure and to learn more about primary sclerosing cholangitis, please visit their website below:

http://pscpartners.org/awareness-week/

A message from Christopher Leptak at the Food and Drug Administration, Office of New Drugs

Under the 21st Century Cures Act enacted on December 13, 2016, new section 507 (“Qualification of Drug Development Tools”) was added to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act). Although CDER had previously implemented a biomarker qualification program (or “legacy” program), section 507 establishes an updated, multi-stage process for DDT qualification.

Washington D.C., June 19, 2017- The Forum for Collaborative Research is launching the PSC Forum to advance the regulatory science for the development of therapeutics for PSC and its associated morbidities.

The Forum for Collaborative Research
formerly
The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research

We, the Forum for Collaborative Research, affiliated with the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, are celebrating our twentieth anniversary this year. This milestone comes with changes as a result of the Forum’s achievements, and recommendations from our Executive Committee members. For the past two decades, the Forum’s work with HIV has evolved into a disease-specific model for multi-stakeholder collaboration that now addresses other disease areas including liver diseases (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, and primary sclerosing cholangitis), viral hepatitis (B and C), cytomegalovirus, among others. Thus, the Forum for Collaborative Research will now be comprised of different disease-specific Forums including:

• The CMV Forum
• The HBV Forum
• The HCV Forum
• The HIV Forum
• The Liver Forum

A Press Release from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

U.S. Could Be Rid of Hepatitis B and C as Public Health Problems, Preventing Nearly 90,000 Deaths by 2030, With Better Attention to Prevention, Screening, Treatment, and Creative Financing for Medicines

WASHINGTON – Hepatitis B and C kill more than 20,000 people every year in the United States.  A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine presents a strategy to eliminate these diseases as serious public health problems and prevent nearly 90,000 deaths by 2030.

“Viral hepatitis is simply not a sufficient priority in the United States,” said Brian Strom, chair of the committee that carried out the study and chancellor and university professor, Rutgers Biomedical and Sciences, Rutgers University, Newark, N.J.  “Despite being the seventh leading cause of death in the world – and killing more people every year than HIV, road traffic accidents, or diabetes – viral hepatitis accounts for less than 1 percent of the National Institutes of Health research budget.”