Director’s Note

April 25th, 2025

 

Dear BIRCH Community, 

The UW BIRCH is funded by the NIMH through February 2026 in a no-cost extension period in which we will continue to support events, handle consultation requests, and promote impactful research on HIV and mental health. Core faculty who are organizing BIRCH activities during this scaled-down period include Susan Graham (Administrative Core), Lydia Chwastiak (Integrated Care and Administrative Cores), Patrick Raue (Developmental Core), and David Huh (Methods Core). Please reach out if you have any questions or suggestions for events!

We will be resubmitting an application to become a full NIMH-funded AIDS Research Center in August 2025, and are planning several upcoming events related to our proposed research cores and how they can best serve the BIRCH community. Our initial application received a very positive review that highlighted the many strengths of our center, faculty, staff, and proposed activities, with several addressable critiques. We have been working on our response to reviews and revised aims and strategies for each of the cores and would love your input!

We are proposing three 1-hour meetings in May and June, each focusing on one of the three BIRCH research cores. During these meetings, Core leads will provide a brief (20 minute) presentation on the focus of the research core, why research in that area is critical to work on HIV and mental health in the US and globally, and the work proposed in our original application as well as plans for revisions responding to the feedback we received. We invite anyone in the BIRCH community who is interested in a research core’s focus to attend those meetings and provide feedback on what would help you develop impactful research proposals in that area. 

Our research cores are: the Methods Core, which proposed a focus on community engagement; the Integrated Care Core, which promotes research on care integration within health services; and a new “Healthy Aging with HIV” Core focused on the needs of people aged 50 and over who are living with HIV.  

Our first meeting, scheduled for May 9th, will focus on the Integrated Care Core. For more information, please visit our events page. 

We look forward to hearing your feedback!

Best,

Susan Graham and Lydia Chwastiak, BIRCH Co-Directors