The Forum mourns the passing of Dr. Robert Malow, a Professor in the Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work and Director of the AIDS Prevention Program at Florida International University. While his career focused on HIV/AIDS prevention, generating over $27,000,000 in funded research, many know Dr. Marlow for his HIV ListServ. Dr. Malow's HIV ListServ has been a valuable tool in the field of HIV/AIDS research and key resource on the Forum's website for many years.
In Memoriam
We regret to inform the HIV ListServ community that Dr. Robert M. Malow passed away on February 18th due to complications from cancer. Many in the HIV prevention field did not know about the challenge he faced because he continued working at nearly his usual pace up to a month before his death. This ListServ is sent in memorial of Rob Malow and his dedication to sharing HIV knowledge, research, and news with the global HIV research and care community.
It has been important to Dr. Malow's family to acknowledge the HIV prevention community in their plans to honor his memory: a memorial for his colleagues and students will be held and a scholarship fund will be established at his university, Florida International University (FIU).
The memorial is scheduled for Wednesday, March 27, 2013, 3:00- 5:00 p.m. at FIU on the Modesto Madique campus, AHC-2, Auditorium Rm. 170.
The scholarship fund will be designated for a doctoral student enrolled in FIU's Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work's program of Health Promotion & Disease Prevention (HPDP), whose dissertation proposal has been accepted by the university graduate school and who has plans to conduct research in HIV and pursue an academic career. Because of Dr. Malow's lifelong dedication to HIV research and information dissemination, topics in neglected and emerging areas of HIV prevention research will be encouraged. The first topic to be prioritized is the increasingly disproportionate increase in what is now being called non-AIDS defining cancers (NADCs) among people living with HIV (PLWH). The aim is to encourage research that will improve awareness among patients and providers, clarify directions in screening and the role in overall antiretroviral treatment (ART) retention and engagement in care, particularly in resource-limited settings.
If you wish to contribute to the scholarship fund and/or endowment, please make your check(s) payable to the FIU Foundation Inc., FIU's official charitable organization and 501 (c) 3. In the stub or memo section of the check, the following designation must appear: "Dr. Malow Memorial Scholarship &/o End". Checks may be mailed or delivered to AHC2, 390W2, to the attention of Miriam Tamargo-Ludwig at the following address:
Miriam Tamargo Ludwig Budget & Operations Manager Dean's Office Florida International University Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work 11200 SW 8th Street, AHC2-390W2 Miami, FL 33199
Ph 305-348-7784
Even after diagnosis and during treatment, Dr. Malow never stopped producing new work. Over the course of the last year he assisted graduate students and junior investigators in submitting grants to the National Institutes of Health. He submitted five grant proposals himself since September, including two in January. At the time of his death his most active project involved an innovative approach to cognitive-behavioral stress management to enhance safer sex practices, adherence to HIV antiretroviral treatment, and reduce the use of alcohol and other drugs. This NIH-funded study is currently underway in Haiti.
Dr. Malow became an expert on the science behind his own treatment. Had he continued to thrive, it was expected that he would shift his energy and effort toward the intersection of cancer and HIV prevention research. He will be profoundly missed.
About Dr. Robert M. Malow
Dr. Robert Malow recently marked a decade of service to Florida International University (FIU) where he was a Professor in the Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work and Director of the AIDS Prevention Program. He was recognized by the University in September 2012 with a Faculty Award for Excellence in Research on the occasion of the annual Faculty Convocation.
Considered among the senior leadership of HIV behavioral prevention research nationally and internationally, Rob Malow was known as a "can-do" researcher, mentor, and problem-solver and an ardent research collaborator, unafraid of new frontiers or research areas. He actively cultivated collaboration with nascent and senior researchers and with colleagues in varied areas of study.
Dr. Malow was one of the most prolific scientists in the history of FIU with over 25 grants funded and over one hundred peer-reviewed articles published. His work has focused on the most vulnerable populations, primarily minority groups with HIV and high-risk comorbidities such as substance abuse and mental health problems. Since joining FIU, Dr. Malow received funding for 18 projects, totaling over $19 million and funded by NIH or the CDC.
He grew up in Westbury, Long Island, New York, and loved living in South Florida with his wife and three children. Dr. Malow was a Diplomate in Health Psychology and a licensed clinical psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1980, completing a dissertation focused on psychological aspects in the diagnosis and treatment facial chronic pain conditions. It was this line of research that eventually led him into the areas of drug addiction and HIV prevention, and to Tulane University in the 1980s, becoming Clinical Director of the New Orleans VAMC drug dependency program with a joint appointment as an Associate Research Professor at Tulane. In the early 1990s, he joined the faculty of the University of Miami School of Medicine/Jackson Medical Center, and became Director of Research and Training at its Addiction Research Center, where he developed an extensive portfolio of NIH-funded HIV prevention research. He established the AIDS Prevention Program as an umbrella for these studies, which focused on effective interventions for high risk, underserved groups living in South Florida, among them Caribbean and Latin American immigrants, the mentally ill, juvenile offenders, and people living with HIV. Upon the formation of the Stempel School of Public Health, he subsequently joined the faculty of FIU in late 2002, bringing the AIDS Prevention Program and most of its staff and portfolio to his new institution.
Dr. Malow enjoyed learning about emerging areas of HIV prevention research. In 2007, the newly elected president of the American Public Health Association, Deborah Klein Walker, called for public health professionals to integrate genomics into their research and practice. That year, Dr. Malow was awarded an NIH grant to examine molecular-genetic and neuro-behavioral factors in a randomized trial of an adaptation of Holistic Health Recovery Program (HHRP) for HIV+ male and female substance abusers (R01AA017405, 09/30/07-05/31/12). Convinced that similar factors had been neglected among juvenile offenders, he developed research submissions with the School of Medicine and the Department of Psychology on Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and HIV risk, in co-leadership with a national researcher in ADHD genetic factors, Dr. James Swanson of UC-Irvine. Most recently, he forged a new research collaboration with FIU's School of Journalism, the School of Computing and Information Sciences, and a local technology start-up to develop mobile applications and social media interventions to improve delivery of HIV prevention strategies.
Dr. Malow had an extensive publication record. His peer-reviewed journal publications alone numbered over a hundred. Over the course of his career, he generated well over $27,000,000 in funded research. He was a highly requested NIH reviewer, publication co-author, and peer reviewer for conference abstracts and leading HIV-related journals. When asked once about his research philosophy, his response was, "My interest and intent has been to know everything I could about what works in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention, what may be at the frontier, and how other areas of research, such as obesity prevention, may be related to reducing transmission risk."
It was this philosophy that led him in 1997 to originate the HIV ListServ, which many have relied upon and considered a gift to the field. For most of its existence, the ListServ was personally selected and written by Dr. Malow and distributed up to 4 times per week. Currently, the ListServ has an estimated total user population of 15,000 globally. The ListServ is a collection of current HIV literature and news, usually in the form of abstracts/summaries, including thematic distributions highlighting particular problems and research at the frontier of the field. Dr. Malow called the ListServ "my way of studying the field, reducing barriers to give-and-take in HIV/AIDS research, and actually, enhancing the enjoyability of my day-to-day work." In 2006, the U.S. Conference on AIDS chose Dr. Malow for an "Unsung Hero" award, in recognition of the ListServ's contribution to HIV/AIDS prevention research, and "his undiminished willingness to help everyone who requests information from him...which he does willingly on a pro bono basis." He continued to shepherd the ListServ's distributions with the aid of his graduate assistant, Jennifer Attonito, even after hospitalization at the end of the year.
The AIDS Prevention Program will continue under the leadership of Dr. Malow's Co-Director since the late 1990s, Dr. Jessy G. Dévieux, Ph.D, with whom he developed the entire program's research portfolio, particularly projects in the Caribbean, Haiti, S. Africa, and Little Haiti in Miami. Dr. Dévieux is an Associate Professor at the Stempel in the Department of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. She will be supported by long-term colleagues in the AIDS Prevention Program, Drs. Michèle Jean-Gilles, Brenda Lerner, and Rhonda Rosenberg, all Research Assistant Professors at Florida International University. The HIV ListServ was a personal project of Dr. Malow's and it has not yet been determined if and how distribution will proceed in the future.
