Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation - The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation is the leading U.S. national non-profit organization dedicated to identifying, funding and conducting basic pediatric HIV/AIDS research. The Foundation's goals include reducing HIV transmission from an HIV-infected mother to her newborn, prolonging and improving the lives of children living with HIV, eliminating HIV in infected children and promoting awareness and compassion about HIV/AIDS world-wide.

American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR) - All scientific endeavor begins with open questions. The broad-based biomedical research that AmFAR supported in the 1980s has been able to answer fundamental questions in immunology and the molecular genetics of HIV. Now, in the mid-1990s, basic research is at a stage where scientists have an ever-growing understanding of the immunology and the molecular biology of HIV/AIDS. In the future, AmFAR's funding will target specific areas in which research will be of significant benefit to people living with HIV/AIDS.

In the United States, AmFAR supports an important segment of the basic research on AIDS. The U.S. government primarily funds multi-year research projects, with but a small fraction of its research dollars going to new investigator-originated research ideas. In contrast, AmFAR supports investigator-originated projects that explore fresh ideas and often come from researchers who are new to the AIDS-research field. In fact, among the AmFAR grantees who were able to enter AIDS research only with the help of an AmFAR "seed" grant, many have stayed in the field and have done very important work; some, in fact, have become leaders in it.

Findings made through basic research on AIDS often have broad application and contribute to the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune disorders. A promising experimental therapy for advanced breast cancer, for example, is high-dose chemotherapy followed by bone-marrow transplantation. However, the profound immunosuppression necessary for successful transplantation often leads to devastating, even fatal, infections caused primarily by opportunistic microbes, such as cytomegalovirus and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, which also plague people with AIDS.

The Center for Pediatric Research (CPR) was established in 1992 as a joint program of Childrenšs Hospital of The Kingšs Daughters and Eastern Virginia Medical School. The Center is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of children. Research at the Center encompasses basic, clinical, and community-based activities directed to the treatment and prevention of disease in infants, children, and adolescents. As a multidisciplinary team, faculty collaborate with members of the national and international scientific community as well as local health departments, physicians, service organizations, child care centers, teachers and parents to provide a nationally recognized research program. All Center faculty are members of the Department of Pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

Breastfeeding is one of the most important strategies for protecting infants against morbidity and mortality due to infectious disease. A meta-analysis of 35 studies from 14 countries found a mean 3.5 to 4.9-fold increased incidence of diarrheal disease among infants who were not breast-fed compared to exclusively breast-fed infants duri