Seek, Test, Treat and Retain (STTR) Harmonization Project

The aim of this project is to increase the comparability, collaboration, and scientific yield of clinical research on HIV and drug abuse by promoting the use of common measures across studies, creating a set of integrated data, and analyzing these data. As envisioned, the aggregate data would allow researchers to address scientific questions regarding the effectiveness of the STTR model of care and other questions of public health relevance.

NIDA has facilitated the harmonization of data collection across 20+ grants implementing and testing the STTR paradigm. The first of these grants were funded through two separate funding announcements: "Seek, Test, and Treat: Addressing HIV in the Criminal Justice System" and "Seek, Test, Treat, and Retain: Addressing HIV among Vulnerable Populations". Additional studies and other relevant sources of data are being added to this effort in an ongoing process. Initial harmonization activities included the identification of 12 common data domains and development of core measures for each domain. In the current phase of this project, the data collected are being integrated in order to facilitate analyses of data from multiple studies.