Harvard School of Public Health

Relationship between CBAR, SDAC, HSPH, FSTRF, and DFCI

CBAR staff are primarily based at one of three institutions - Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Frontier Science and Technology Research Foundation (FSTRF), and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). HSPH is one of the schools of Harvard University. FSTRF is a non-profit organization started in the 1970s, with offices in Chestnut Hill (suburban Boston) at 1244 Boylston Street and in Amherst (Buffalo), New York. DFCI is a hospital and comprehensive cancer center located in Boston on Binney Street.

The Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research (CBAR) is a component of HSPH (analogous to the Department of Biostatistics) which provides the staff appointments and administrative project management for projects of the Center. Many of the Ph.D. level statisticians of CBAR have faculty appointments through the Department of Biostatistics of HSPH, and are thus responsible for teaching courses, working with students, and other departmental responsibilities.

The main projects of CBAR are the provision of statistical and data management support to two cooperative groups, the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group (AACTG) and the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group (PACTG), both sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in Washington. HSPH, DFCI and FSTRF (Phase I) staff in Boston who work with these two cooperative groups are collectively known as the Statistical and Data Analysis Center (SDAC). Whenever it is necessary to make the distinction between adult and pediatric, they are referred to as the Adult Statistical and Data Analysis Center (A-SDAC) and Pediatric Statistical and Data Analysis Center (P-SDAC). The staff in Amherst who work with these cooperative groups are called the Data Management Center (DMC), with distinctions A-DMC or P-DMC when necessary.

Other projects of CBAR include vaccine trials sponsored by the Immune Response Corporation (IRC) and a National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) funded project known as NARC (Neurologic AIDS Research Consortium) whose purpose is to enhance the study of therapies for neurological manifestations of HIV among some ACTG investigators.