February 18, 2002

Kevin O'Reilly of the World Health Organization will give the opening talk in an international lecture series on HIV Intervention and Prevention and Medical Adherence to Anti-Retroviral Therapies on Thursday, Feb. 28.

The series, which continues through spring 2003, is sponsored by the Institute for Social Inquiry and the Center for HIV Intervention and Prevention.

O'Reilly's lecture, "Synthesizing and Modeling Effectiveness of Interventions for HIV Prevention and Care," will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center's Konover Auditorium.

O'Reilly has worked in sexual and reproductive health since receiving his doctoral degree in medical anthropology from UConn in 1980. After more than a decade at the Centers for Disease Control, O'Reilly became chief of the World Health Organization's Prevention Research Unit, part of the group's Global Programme on AIDS, in 1992.

Recently, O'Reilly has been attempting to synthesize the evidence of the effectiveness of different interventions for HIV prevention and care. During his lecture, he will present a preliminary analysis of the effectiveness of approaches to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

Other scheduled speakers for this spring are Albert Tuldrˆ, a psychologist and leader in recent research on adherence to anti-retroviral therapies from University Hospital in Barcelona, who will speak on March 14; Fabrizio Starace, an expert on medical adherence and quality of life issues for HIV patients from Cotugno Hospital in Naples, who will speak on April 11; and Bella Mody, a professor from Michigan State University, who has conducted communications research on HIV in India. Mody will speak on April 19.

For more information about the series, contact Zoe Strickler at (860) 486-5060 or (860) 486-4529.