Updates from 2nd Generation URBAN ARCH HIV/Alcohol P01s

Closing out an eventful summer, the ARCHER team has made progress on study startup for both our physical activity (PA) and chronic pain trials, and our team has expanded, with multiple new members joining in recent months. Much of the team’s work has focused on refining both center trials’ study measures as well as study operations and protocols. In addition, both trials are currently under review for initial approval by the Boston University Medical Campus Institutional Review Board.

In preparation for trial recruitment and enrollment launch in October, we have continued working with BuildClinical (a vendor with expertise in creating and targeting research advertisements to populations based on study-specific criteria) to finalize online recruitment materials that promote the trials, and develop and test online pre-screening forms. In collaboration with Michael Winter, Sandra Deluccia and Valerie Grim from BU’s Biostatistics and Epidemiology Data Analytics Center (BEDAC), the team has continued development of both trial participant tracking systems and REDCap data collection forms. Members from ARCHER and BEDAC also met with individuals from MetricWire (a specialized mobile application for research data collection) for a demonstration of the platform’s ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data collection tools, as well as Fitabase which is a platform that will collect the physical activity trial’s Fitbit data from participants.

Training for trial interventionists is underway. For the chronic pain trial, Dr. Tibor Palfai is training a team consisting of five doctoral students and one postdoctoral fellow, while Drs. Lisa Quintiliani and Ana Abrantes have begun training two postdoctoral fellows for the PA trial. For a recent PA trial training session, the team welcomed Dr. Allison Webel from the University of Washington, an expert on developing and testing lifestyle interventions to improve the health and symptom experience in adults living with HIV, to discuss thoughtful approaches to PA intervention sessions with participants.

Later this month, the ARCHER leadership team plans to meet with our Program Advisory Committee (PAC) and plans to convene the center’s first Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) meeting are currently underway.

Last, the team would like to introduce Amanda Flanagan, who joined the ARCHER staff on September 6, 2022. Graduating from the University of Utah in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science in Health Society and Policy, Amanda served as the chief research assistant on the Pediatric Research Observing Trends and Exposures in COVID-19 Timelines (PROTECT) Study, which tracks the effectiveness of recommended COVID-19 vaccines among children. Amanda recently moved to Boston to pursue her Master of Public Health here at BU. As a research assistant for both ARCHER trials, she will focus on recruiting and enrolling individuals to participate in the chronic pain trial and the physical activity trial, as well as administering research assessments to collect baseline and follow-up data.

We invite any interested investigators who wish to use existing Boston ARCH data for secondary analysis to contact Dr. Stein, Kara Magane or Nicolle Rueras for additional information.

META HIV CVD RCT (project 1) will host their first Program Advisory Committee meeting and DSMB meeting in Fall 2022 with enrollment planned at Vanderbilt University Medical Center site beginning in February 2023. META HIV CVD (project 2) has successfully completed shipment of VACS specimens to the META Integrated Metagenomic and Metabolomic Core Lab at the University of Louisville. Metabolomic analysis on the first samples are underway. The META HIV PPG plans to host a second annual satellite meeting at the RSA annual meeting in Bellevue, WA in June 2023. This meeting will include investigators from other funded P01s, more information to come!