Collaboration
The Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions (ATN) is a national collaborative clinical trials network established by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to conduct clinical trials and related research both independently and in collaboration with existing research networks. The primary purpose of the ATN is to develop protocols on promising behavioral, microbicidal, prophylactic, therapeutic, and vaccine modalities in HIV infected and HIV at risk adolescents, ages 12 through 24 years.
The ATN offers expertise and infrastructure to collaborative protocol development that will ensure feasible and acceptable study design as well as experience in recruiting and retaining this unique population. The Network investigators are strongly committed to developing the best scientific knowledge possible and are committed as individual professionals and as a group to improving the health and quality of life of HIV-infected and other high-risk adolescents. The Network welcomes the opportunity to consider collaborative proposals from other basic science and clinical investigators.
The ATN offers three key features to collaborators in the field of adolescence and HIV infection:
- Leadership by experts with behavioral, clinical, therapeutic, epidemiologic, laboratory, and statistical expertise to set research priorities;
- Resources for collaborative protocol development to ensure feasible and acceptable study design; and
- Experience in recruiting and retaining the adolescent population in clinical trials.
Principles for Collaborations
Investigators interested in collaborating with the ATN will develop a brief description of the proposed study in a short encapsulated format, i.e., a Protocol Concept Capsule (PCC), following the development procedure in Step One, Initiation of a Protocol Concept, of the ATN Policy for Study Concept Plan Development. Additionally, the investigators will identify who will collect the data, manage the data, and be responsible for providing the Executive Committee with data analysis. The collaboration supports the overall purpose of the Network and is within the prioritized scientific agenda as established by the Executive Committee.