|
Johns Hopkins Researchers Awarded $41 Million to Continue Work Focused on People Living with HIV in the U.S.
Renewed NIH funding will support ongoing study of men and women living with HIV and create new centralized data and leadership centers
August 20, 2026
A team of Johns Hopkins researchers has been awarded three six-year grants totaling more than $41 million from the National Institutes of Health to continue investigating the occurrence and causes of chronic health conditions in men and women living with HIV in the U.S. through research underway for decades.
The new funding will support the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study (MWCCS), formed in 2019 with the merger of two longitudinal studies: the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), an NIH-supported study of gay and bisexual men living with or without HIV that started in 1984, and the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), a similar NIH-supported study of women that began in 1993.
The three NIH grants will fund a clinical research site, a data analysis and sharing site, and a leadership and coordination site.
An estimated 1.2 million people in the U.S. live with HIV today, and their life expectancy can extend to the 70s and beyond when HIV is diagnosed early and they receive treatment. This is an enormous advance from 1984, the year MACS started. The HIV/AIDS pandemic was in its early years, there were no effective treatments, and AIDS was almost always fatal. The introduction of effective treatments in the mid-1990s saved and extended lives.
The MWCCS studies have generated more than 3,400 research papers over the past 40 years, research that’s also contributed to understanding health issues in people who do not have HIV. As people with HIV are living much longer, many studies, including from MWCCS, have shown that people with HIV often develop certain chronic diseases and conditions—such as cardiovascular disease, lung disease, osteoporosis, and frailty—earlier than people without HIV. Why and how this happens is not known, and addressing these questions will be a major focus of the renewed MWCCS.
The researchers will also investigate whether living with HIV affects the aging process in general. This may help advance our understanding of how aging occurs in all people whether they have HIV or not.
“The renewal of the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study is highly aligned with NIH’s broader goals of supporting rigorous, collaborative research that can inform better health outcomes,” says Stephen Gange, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School and executive vice provost at Johns Hopkins University. “By integrating clinical, behavioral, and biological data from a cohort of people living with and without HIV, we can continue to generate evidence on the mechanisms underlying aging and comorbidities, while also informing existing prevention and treatment strategies that are essential to ending the HIV epidemic in the United States.”
The award renewal, funded by 13 NIH institutes and offices led by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, will be used to continue follow-up of more than 5,900 men and women in the study through:
- A new Leadership and Coordinating Center, led by Todd Brown, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Amber D’Souza, PhD, MPH, MS, professor of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School, in collaboration with Phyllis Tien, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The Leadership and Coordinating Center will improve clinical and scientific guidance and operational oversight of MWCCS’s 13 sites and Data Analysis and Sharing Center, providing focus, setting scientific priorities, as well as supporting enhanced community and participant engagement.
- A Data Analysis and Sharing Center, led by Gange and Elizabeth Topper, PhD, MPH, MEd, research professor of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Building upon the legacy of prior data centers, this team will expand sharing of data and biospecimens, strengthen biostatistical support of investigators, and create a more unified ecosystem that will expand researchers’ ability to access and analyze MWCCS data.
- Continuation of the Johns Hopkins-led clinical research center, the Study to Help the AIDS Research Effort (SHARE) in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., led by Brown and Joseph Margolick, MD, PhD, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Johns Hopkins-led clinical research site will retain, track, and study men in the SHARE study. It is one of 13 clinical research centers funded by NIH across the U.S.
The MWCCS will continue to bring together researchers from a wide variety of disciplines to investigate the basic science and epidemiology of HIV infection in the U.S., with a focus on comorbidities among men and women living with HIV.
Through sustained collaboration with study participants, the MWCCS hopes to continue advancing research and knowledge about HIV comorbidities and to help improve the lives of both those living with HIV and those who do not have HIV.
Contact
Jonathan Eichberger,
MA
Communications Associate | Epidemiology
je@jhu.edu
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 N. Wolfe St. W6508, Baltimore, MD 21205
O: 410-502-5494
Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/johns-hopkins-researchers-awarded-41-million-to-continue-work-focused-on-people-living-with-hiv-in-the-us
“Reproduced with permission - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health”
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Back to…
Positively Positive - Living with HIV/AIDS:
HIV/AIDS News
For more HIV and AIDS News visit…
Positively Positive - Living with HIV/AIDS: HIV/AIDS News Archive
|
