The Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services (CHIPTS) is a collaboration of researchers from UCLA, Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, Friends Research Institute, and RAND working with the broader Los Angeles community toward a common goal: to enhance our collective understanding of HIV research and to promote early detection, effective prevention, and treatment programs for HIV. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, CHIPTS serves as a bridge among researchers, government, service providers, and people with HIV in responding to the changes in the HIV epidemic and in shaping sound public policy.

CHIPTS offers a range of services including consultation on the development of new research projects and assistance with obtaining funds for these initiatives. CHIPTS provides technical assistance in HIV program development and evaluation and sponsors an annual conference for developing researchers to present their work. In addition, the Center hosts an annual policy forum for researchers, government officials, and the HIV community to discuss emerging HIV policy issues, as well as hosts a research colloquia series.

To accomplish this mission, six Cores support the design, implementation, and evaluation of existing funded projects and assist in the development of new research protocols focused on communities, systems-of-care, service providers, and individuals at risk. Specifically, in the areas of early HIV detection, prevention, and treatment, we have:

Administrative Core

An 'Administrative Core' to identify and manage strategies for addressing the Center's strategic planning process (i.e., setting a scientific agenda), daily operation of the Center, including self-monitoring, budgets, dissemination, and identifying scientific challenges that require analysis by multi-disciplinary teams;

Development Core

A 'Development Core' to review and allocate pilot funds; implement an investigator career development component through which researchers can obtain multidisciplinary peer review; and coordinate community relationships, particularly across Cores;

Methods Core

A 'Methods Core' to provide infrastructure support in biostatistics and other methods areas, including consultations, training, and project support in research designs, data collection and management (including access to programming of computerized assessments for ACASI and CAPI programming), and analytic strategies;

Treatment Services Core

A 'Treatment Services Core' to examine the theories, delivery, quality and outcomes of HIV-related systems-of-care, particularly provider-level interventions, and will include the functions of program evaluation;

Intervention Core

An 'Intervention Core' to provide infrastructure training to implement intervention trials with fidelity and will develop new intervention delivery formats that are consumer-focused and that can be more easily disseminated broadly, particularly interventions that utilize the Internet or media broadcast; and

Policy Core

A 'Policy Core' to support sound policy making relevant to HIV by developing and disseminating information about how public and private policies affect HIV service delivery and the outcomes for persons infected with and at risk for HIV, seek to elucidate the links between policies and health outcomes and to disseminate these findings to policy makers and develop cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses of prevention and treatment programs and assist collaborators and community partners in including a cost dimension in their evaluations.