Edward H. Kaplan Receives CDC Scientific Achievement Award for Research Estimating Rate of New HIV Infections

Edward H. Kaplan, the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences at the Yale School of Management, professor of public health at the Yale School of Medicine, and professor of engineering at the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) HIV Incidence Surveillance Group, have won the 2009 Charles C. Shepard Science Award in the Assessment and Epidemiology category for their paper "Estimation of HIV Incidence in the United States," which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in August 2008.

The Charles C. Shepard Science Awards, established in 1985, recognize excellence in science at the CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). An award is presented for the most outstanding peer-reviewed research published by CDC and ATSDR scientists during the preceding year in three categories: Assessment and Epidemiology, Prevention and Control, and Laboratory and Methods. This year’s award winners were announced at a ceremony held at the CDC on June 29.

The award-winning study conducted by the CDC research team including Kaplan devised new, more precise laboratory and statistical models to estimate the incidence of new HIV infections in the U.S. Through these new methods, the team found the annual rate of new infections to be 40% higher than previously measured. Approximately 56,300 Americans became newly infected with HIV in 2006, according to the findings, compared to the CDC’s former estimate of 40,000 new infections per year. The new method allows the CDC to more accurately estimate and monitor HIV incidence in the U.S.

In addition to Kaplan, the CDC research team included: H. Irene Hall, PhD; Ruiguang Song, PhD; Philip Rhodes, PhD; Joseph Prejean, PhD; Qian An, MS; Lisa M. Lee, PhD; John Karon, PhD; Ron Brookmeyer, PhD; Matthew T. McKenna, MD; and Robert S. Janssen, MD.

The Charles C. Shepard Science Awards honor the memory of Dr. Charles C. Shepard, an internationally recognized microbiologist who served as chief of the CDC’s Leprosy and Rickettsial Branch for more than 30 years.