AIDS researcher
appointed director of center for health disparities
research

James Hildreth, a Harvard- and Oxford-trained researcher who was a professor at Johns Hopkins University for 17 years, has been named the director of the Center for Health Disparities Research in HIV at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., TheTennessean reports. Hildreth, who assumes his new duties on July 1, will lead a research team that will study why people engage in behaviors that put them at risk for HIV, "chemical condoms," and microbicides that could help women protect themselves against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. "The work that he's doing, in particular, will be a great advancement to stop the disease--not only in this country, but globally," Meharry spokeswoman Jill Scoggins told the paper.