Midwest D-CFAR Investigators Awarded NIH Supplements
September 25, 2026
Several members of the Midwest D-CFAR were recently awarded administrative supplements by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These supplements support the aims of the parent Midwest D-CFAR grant and align directly with the national Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative, which aims to reduce new HIV infections by 90% by 2030.
Temitope Ojo, PhD: lead PI
The first supplement, led by Center Co-Directors Elvin Geng and Juliet Iwelunmor along with Temitope Ojo, Hilary Reno, Olufunto Olusanya, and Ashley Bardon, “builds on ongoing Midwest D-CFAR efforts to explore public health vending machines as a strategy to increase access to HIV prevention resources. A prior crowdsourced open call and designathon identified five Missouri-based community and academic teams that proposed innovative vending-machine strategies for different communities statewide.” Read more about the Missouri HIV Prevention Vending Machine Project designathon here.
Despite the early success of the open call, “there remains limited understanding of how individuals who use these vending machines can be effectively connected to HIV/STI prevention, treatment, and supportive services after accessing these resources.”
Accordingly, this project will “begin to address persistent gaps in HIV prevention and linkage to care in Missouri by developing a community-to-clinic model that connects users of non-traditional prevention pathways, such as HIV/STI prevention vending machines, to appropriate treatment, prevention, and support services.” The goal is to “develop a pragmatic, community-informed pathway to link low-threshold access to prevention to real-world care. “ The investigator team posits that the resulting model “has the potential to strengthen the HIV/STI prevention and care continuum in Missouri and inform similar efforts in other Ending the HIV Epidemic priority settings.”
Reflecting on this accomplishment, Temitope Ojo stated, “Through community partnerships, we hope to connect HIV prevention vending machine users in Missouri to trusted care, creating inclusive pathways to prevention and treatment for people facing healthcare access barriers.”
Whitney Irie, PhD: lead PI
The second supplement, titled READY Bootheel, is led by Center Co-Directors Elvin Geng and Juliet Iwelunmor along with new WashU faculty member, Whitney Irie, and Cynthia Dean of the Missouri Bootheel Regional Consortium. The project aims to build a “resident, trusted community workforce in the Missouri Bootheel to close a persistent gap in HIV prevention engagement in a region with documented need and no current pathway into the Midwest D-CFAR’s research infrastructure.“
The Missouri Bootheel region “ranks among the lowest five percent of Missouri counties on overall health outcomes and carries a documented, continuing HIV-related burden.” In rural communities like the Bootheel, transportation, distrust of local healthcare systems, and confidentiality concerns have been identified as persistent barriers to participation and engagement in healthcare. The Midwest D-CFAR has built a successful community-engagement enterprise through our Scientific Working Group on Neglected Populations, but this enterprise “has not produced durable reach into the Missouri Bootheel,” due to it being “calibrated to the research and service environment of metropolitan St. Louis [and run] through a St. Louis hub.”
READY Bootheel attemps to address this engagement gap through a nine-month satellite co-developed with the Missouri Bootheel Regional Consortium. The project aims to “[train] and [credential] local Community Engagement Partners and [establish] a two-way bridge between the Bootheel and the [Midwest D-CFAR’s] research agenda.” Ultimately, the project will create “lasting, community-held capacity for HIV prevention work that reflects the realities and priorities of Bootheel residents themselves.”
“At the end of the day, we can’t build HIV research capacity in the Bootheel without trust and without asking who gets to shape the research” stated Whitney Irie. “READY Bootheel acts on that reality with less talking and more walking. Grab your boots. Get READY!”
Written by Kate Gershwin.