Improving the health and well being of HIV-positive and at-risk youth is the goal of the Physical/Psychosocial Advocacy & Treatment For HIV Youth Program (PATH). This multi-disciplinary collaboration of experienced HIV researchers and care providers was established by Children’s Memorial Hospital and Howard Brown Community Health Center to conduct research on the north side of Chicago.

Working in partnership with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), this multi-year program pairs the strengths of academic medicine with those of community-based health care to offer unique, comprehensive services without barriers.

As part of this public-private partnership, a gift of $1.3 million from philanthropist Ann Lurie to the Foundation for NIH expands the reach of the NICHD-sponsored Adolescent Medicine Trials Network (ATN) to include more disadvantaged, hard-to-reach adolescents in Chicago’s North Side community. The program is assisting the ATN in developing and conducting behavioral, translational, prophylactic, therapeutic, microbicide and vaccine trials and other interventions in an effort to help disadvantaged, hard-to-reach individuals, aged 12 to 24.