Dr. Steven ShoptawDr. Steven Shoptaw, CHIPTS Co-Director, will be giving an invited address on March 11, 2016 in Vienna, Austria, at a meeting of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The purpose of the U.N. meeting is to develop science-based recommendations on ensuring access to antiretroviral therapies for people living with HIV/AIDS who also use drugs.   This is one more example of the exciting and impactful work that is being conducted by CHIPTS investigators.

Dr. Shoptaw is a licensed psychologist and Director of the Center for Behavioral and AddictionIMG_0516 Medicine at UCLA. He is a Professor in two departments at UCLA (Family Medicine and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences) and Vice Chair of Research in Family Medicine. His research portfolio focuses on the treatment of addiction and on HIV prevention in the context of addiction, especially in the Western U.S. where stimulant use is the single strongest predictor of HIV transmission. For over 20 years, he has conducted Phase Ib and IIa randomized clinical trials of medications and behavioral interventions for stimulant dependent individuals. He recently completed a Phase Ib interaction safety study of ibudilast at relevant doses of methamphetamine and is a Co-Investigator on a Phase IIa randomized controlled trial of ibudilast as an outpatient treatment for methamphetamine dependence, 50% of whom are HIV-positive. He is a member of the DAIDS-funded, HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) Executive Committee, and site Principal Investigator for HPTN-073, a feasibility study of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (Truvada) in Black men who have sex with men, steve shoptaw at the conferencea group with 7% incidence in Los Angeles and high rates of stimulant and alcohol use. He is also a Co-PI on a 5-year cooperative agreement (U01 DA036267) to establish a cohort of minority men who have sex with men to investigate interactions between non-injection use of methamphetamine, cocaine, opiates and binge drinking and transmission and progression of HIV.IMG_0517