# Mentoring in Patient Oriented Research on Food Insecurity, HIV and Aging

> **NIH NIH K24** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO · 2020 · $188,088

## Abstract

Project Summary
 Dr. Weiser is an internist trained in HIV epidemiology whose research program focuses on the intersection
between food insecurity (FI) and health outcomes in HIV, and on interventions to reduce FI as a mechanism to
improve HIV care delivery. She is a sought-after mentor and won the UCSF Academic Senate Distinction in
Mentoring Award. Protected time for mentoring and for an innovative new line of research is instrumental for
her to achieve her long-term career goals of becoming an international leader in patient-oriented research
(POR) related to FI and HIV health, and of developing a multidisciplinary mentoring program and eventual
training hub in this area. This K24 application proposes a comprehensive plan for career development,
mentoring, and research, which together work towards the goal of reducing HIV health disparities, including an
expansion of her research into a new direction by examining how FI affects aging outcomes in HIV. Her
proposed career development plan will provide training in frailty, cognitive disorders of aging, multilevel
modeling and geospatial methods, as well as in mentoring and leadership skills. She proposes a structured
mentoring program including individual development plans and formal and informal teaching to help mentees
reach targeted goals. She will recruit mentees from new disciplines such as geriatrics, neurology and
psychology, and more mentees from underrepresented backgrounds as is critical for health disparities
research. This mentoring program will help her train the next generation of researchers in FI and HIV.
 To stimulate innovative POR while providing opportunities for increased, more effective mentoring, she
proposes to leverage the platform of the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) and expand her research
into three new domains: 1) determining the impact of FI on aging outcomes including frailty and cognitive
impairment; 2) understanding the mechanisms though which FI may mediate these outcomes using a novel
conceptual model; and 3) investigating upstream determinants of FI using census tract data. This study is
innovative in being: 1) one of the first to determine longitudinal impacts of FI on frailty and cognitive impairment
and the first among HIV-infected women; 2) one of the first to assess potential mechanisms for how FI may
contribute to frailty and cognitive impairment; and 3) one of the first to evaluate neighborhood-level predictors
of FI using a rigorous multi-level modeling approach, and in a large sample of HIV-infected and uninfected
women. To accomplish her aims and answer high impact questions at minimal cost, she will leverage data
already collected in WIHS, and add measurements of FI and dietary quality for three years. She will also lead
a qualitative study to understand the neighborhood- and policy-level contexts of FI and how they shape the
lived experiences of health. The proposed research will help Dr. Weiser build a strong interdisciplinary network
of ear...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9934117
- **Project number:** 5K24AI134326-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO
- **Principal Investigator:** SHERI Dawn WEISER
- **Activity code:** K24 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $188,088
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-07-14 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9934117

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9934117, Mentoring in Patient Oriented Research on Food Insecurity, HIV and Aging (5K24AI134326-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9934117. Licensed CC0.

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