The RPAR Collaborative
RPAR was developed thanks to the efforts of many individuals to be made available in an open-source environment.  Past and present members of the RPAR Collaborative include: Dan Abrahamson,  Leo Beletsky, Kim Blankenship, Tyler Crone, Corey Davis, Tatiana Duklas, Sarah Hanck, Nataliya Kitsenko, Kavita Misra, Milosz Parczewski, Magda Leszczyszyn-Pynka, Jason Sapsin, Justyna Sobeyko, Inna Vyshemirskaya and Joe Welsh.

Scott Burris, send email, has been a leading authority on law’s role in HIV for almost two decades. He published one of the first substantive legal analyses of government health powers in 1985, and the first comprehensive analysis of HIV law in the US in 1987. His international HIV policy experience includes a UNDP-funded project to analyze and address policy needs in HIV-related legislation in Kyrgyzstan; training judges on HIV law and judicial ethics in India; advising legislators on drug policy reform in the former Soviet republic of Georgia; and, most recently, working with lawyers and policy-makers from the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress on a framework for AIDS legislation in that city. He has an extensive research record in US law.  For more about his work, click here.

Patricia Case, send email, has been at the leading edge of research at the intersection of policy and behavior for many years.  Her research has provided an important base for understanding the implementation of changes in syringe laws and the functioning of the law in practice. This work has underscored recent work in the US to increase access to sterile syringes through pharmacy-based interventions. In moving from the impact of law to policy, Dr. Case has conducted extensive research on the implementation, efficacy, and acceptability of both sanctioned and unsanctioned syringe exchange programs, which provided some of the early methods that were used to evaluate program efficacy. At the individual behavior level, she has looked at methods for measurement of the prevalence of injection drug use, challenges in psychological assessment of IDUs, specific high risk behaviors among IDUs, and outreach models for intervention with IDUs.

Zita Lazzarini, send email, has a distinguished record in HIV law and policy research. She was co-author of the leading book on the relevance of international human rights provisions to the HIV epidemic and HIV prevention, as well as one of the earliest compilations and analyses of international AIDS-related legislation. She has extensive experience in collecting and analyzing law as a facet of public health policy, in areas including public health enabling law, health information privacy, perinatal HIV transmission, syringe access for IDUs, and water safety law in the context of emerging diseases.

Repsina Chintalova-Dallas, send email, is the RPAR project director. Ms Chintalova-Dallas is originally from Turkmenistan. She is very familiar with the FSU having worked for multiple development projects in the Central Asian countries of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. While in Uzbekistan, Ms Chintalova-Dallas participated in developing health promotion campaigns, completing data analysis on conducted campaigns, created a database of all project products and legal documents, and managed the study tour programs for health care professionals. Ms Chintalova-Dallas facilitated household survey activities in rural Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Leo Beletsky, send email, serves as a public health, development, and marketing advisor to the RPAR team.  Leo's background includes development of microgovernance and organizational behavior assessment tools at the New York Academy of Medicine's Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health, and a number of qualitative public health, medical informatics, and health law-related projects in the United States, Brazil, the Caribbean and, most recently, in Eastern Europe.  Leo oversaw the design and implementation of this website.

The US team has been working with the local investigators from the CEE and Former Soviet Union(FSU) for over two years, beginning with the preparation of training materials for the preliminary study in Budapest in June 2002 and continuing through the training to collaboration on the design and proposal for the RPAR study. The local investigators bring a wealth of experience and other qualifications to this project, and the lead investigator from each country completed the pilot training of RPAR.

Poland: Dr. Justyna Sobeyko, send an email, primary investigator in Szczecin, is a Polish lawyer, who has worked and written on human rights and ethics issues related to the HIV epidemic. She currently provides legal services for persons living with HIV/AIDS in Krakow. The Polish team includes researchers with various backgrounds including a lawyer,a  physician, an epidemiologist and a social worker involved in a city-wide programs addressing the needs of HIV+ patients, commercial sex workers and MSM.

Ukraine: Dr. Nataliya Kitsenko , send an email, primary investigator in Odessa, is physician whose work in HIV/AIDS began in 1996 in Odessa. Her work has focused on prevention of HIV among drug users and sex workers and she has been active in trainings and project management not only in the Ukraine, but also in neighboring regions or countries. She previously worked with international organizations (UNICEF, The British Council, World AIDS Foundation, UNDP, and UNAIDS, and USAID) on projects such as the development of training materials and tools for epidemiological studies. The Ukrainian team consist of highly motivated and well-trained researchers specializing in law (criminal law), a physician working with HIV+ patients and a social worker involved in harm reduction programs.

Russia: Ms Inna Vyshemirskaya, send an email, primary investigator in Kaliningrad, Russia is a social worker with extensive expertise and background in HIV/AIDS research. Ms. Vyshemirskaya has been involved in social aspects of HIV/AIDS in Kaliningrad since 1999. Ms. Vyshemirskaya participated in a number of fellowship programs in Germany and published several articles on HIV/AIDS in Kaliningrad and Moscow.  The Russian team draws on the expertise of a criminal justice lawyer, social worker and field workers.

The project’s consultants bring additional strengths to the team. Daniel Abrahamson, JD, is an expert on drug policy development and advocacy.  As legal director for the Drug Policy Alliance, he has written and promoted important innovations in drug policy in the United States as a legislative drafter, public policy consultant, educator, and legal advocate.  His legislative drafting efforts include the 2000 ballot initiative, Proposition 36, in which California voters opted for a system of treatment over jail for first-time non-violent drug offenders.  In recognition for his innovative work in the field of drug policy, he was awarded the Developing Leadership in Reducing Substance Abuse award by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2002. 

Joseph Welsh, JD, MBA, is an expert on international program implementation. As Chief Operating Officer of a US based NGO, he managed and delivered more than $50 million of aid to more than twelve countries in Central and Eastern Europe from 1991-2001. Programs included the establishment of medical and technical education programs in Ukraine and Russia.  As a research fellow at Temple University School of Law, he participated in the development of the RPAR training materials and research tools.

Other collaborators include staff at the Lawyer’s  Collective HIV/AIDS Unit in India, the China CDC and Tsinghua Law School in Beijing, Indrajit Pandey from UNAIDS in Bangkok, and Kim Blankenship and staff of Project Parivartan at the Center for Interdiscplinary Research on AIDS at Yale.

The development of this site was supported, in part, by the Open Society Institute's Network Public Health Program , and by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Grant Number 5-RO-DA17002-02).

Last Updated: February 2006