Sunil Solomon Receives NIDA’s Avant-Garde Award for HIV and Substance Use Disorder Research

"The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Avant-Garde Award Program for HIV and Substance Use Disorder Research supports individual scientists of exceptional creativity at all career levels who propose high-impact research that will open new areas of HIV research and/or lead to new avenues for prevention and treatment of HIV among people who use drugs. The term “avant-garde” is used to describe highly innovative approaches that have the potential to be transformative.” 

Dr. Solomon’s research will evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of long-acting (LA) antiretroviral therapy (ART) via ethnography, estimate the efficacy and safety of LA ART vs. oral ART among previously unsuppressed People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) via a clinical trial, and model the cost-effectiveness of LA ART among PWID populations using agent-based modelling incorporating costs. 

In 2016, Solomon received NIDA’s Avenir Award for HIV Research to identify innovative, cost-effective strategies that capitalize upon network-connectedness of PWID to identify viremic HIV-infected persons who may or may not be aware of their HIV or HCV status and link them to care centers.