Miami Herald - December 27, 2007
OSCAR CORRAL, ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

The federal government is pouring grant money into researching Hispanic health issues at two universities in Miami -- the metropolitan area with the highest rate of new AIDS cases in the United States.

The National Institutes of Health has given the University of Miami a $7 million grant and Florida International University a $6.5 million grant to study and develop solutions for health problems that disproportionately affect Hispanics, including HIV/AIDS infections, other sexually transmitted diseases and substance abuse.

The grants are among the biggest ever given by the NIH to each university for this kind of research, executives from each school said. While the two universities will collaborate on several studies, they each will conduct independent research.

"There's a growing problem of HIV/AIDS in Miami's Hispanic community and among Hispanics nationwide," said Mario De La Rosa, director of the Center for Research on U.S. Latinos, HIV/AIDS and Drug Abuse, also known as CRUSADA, at Florida International University.

"The population in Miami is in many ways different than in the rest of the country. It hopefully will provide us with some answers as to why Latinos abuse substances and why there's a growing rate of AIDS."

The five-year grants, from NIH's National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, will help make Miami one of the top research areas in the country on Hispanic health disparities and substance abuse, said executives from both schools. FIU will use its grant to expand CRUSADA. UM will expand its Center of Excellence for Hispanic Health Disparities Research, known as El Centro.

The grants are coming to an area with a growing AIDS/HIV problem.

According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2005 report, the South Florida metropolitan area, which includes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, led the country from 2003 to 2005 in new AIDS cases reported for every 100,000 people.

In 2005, the last year for which statistics are available on the CDC's website, the rate of new AIDS cases nationally was 14 for every 100,000 people. South Florida led the country with 45; New York City was 33 and Los Angeles was 12.

Specifically among Hispanics, Miami was also high in newly diagnosed AIDS cases, particularly women. Only New York and San Juan reported more new cases of Hispanic women infected with AIDS in 2004, according to the CDC.

At FIU, some of the money will be used by CRUSADA to expand its "You Gotta Know, Hay Que Saber" outreach program aimed at increasing knowledge of HIV/AIDS among young people; and to help develop tactics for Hispanic women to persuade their sexual partners to use condoms.

One of UM's studies to be funded will focus on HIV/AIDS infection rates among Hispanic women, said Nilda P. Peragallo, dean of UM's School of Nursing and Health Studies.

UM will research intervention methods to help reduce AIDS/HIV among Hispanics.

HIV/AIDS awareness programs aimed at other ethnic groups may not be effective on Hispanics because of language and cultural barriers, according to experts from both UM and FIU. Hispanics are constantly arriving from foreign countries with little or no knowledge of AIDS, experts said. Hispanic women tend to get infected by male partners and may be less prone to demand safe sex, and less likely to seek testing or help.

Another planned UM study, led by research Professor Daniel Santisteban, will study and treat 200 Hispanic children in Miami, ages 11 to 14, who exhibit conduct problems, attention deficit disorder and/or depression.

"These grants came to Miami, I think, because we have all these signs of poor health among Hispanics, and we obviously have an interesting mix of Hispanics in Florida," Santisteban said. "But we also have the track record from investigators who are able to do good science."

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