Contact: Robbie Ward
STARKVILLE, Miss.--An internationally recognized Mississippi State authority on HIV and AIDS policies and research soon begins a four-year term on a federal review panel.
Janet S. St. Lawrence, a professor at the university's Meridian campus, joins a team of professionals chosen to consider research grant applications associated with prevention of the virus and life-threatening condition. They will meet three times a year in Washington, D.C.
Her term with the Center for Scientific Review's Behavioral and Social Science Approaches to Preventing HIV/AIDS Study Section begins July 1 and concludes in 2011. She served previously with the CSR's Mental Health, AIDS and Immunology Study Section.
A part of the Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of Health, the Maryland-based center makes recommendations on whether research proposals submitted to the federal agency should receive funding.
The author of more than 200 books, book chapters and scientific papers, St. Lawrence traveled throughout the world for decades as an official of the Atlanta, Ga.-based federal Centers for Disease Control. Before joining the MSU faculty last year, she was chief of the behavioral interventions and research preventions branch and senior biomedical research scientist for the CDC's National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention.
Grants submitted to the NIH are reviewed first for scientific merit by the study section to which it's assigned. St. Lawrence's group will focus on proposals related to behavioral or social science or public health research.
St. Lawrence holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and master's degree in psychology, both from Nova Southeastern University in Florida. She completed a bachelor's degree in English literature from Boston University.
Over a long career, she also has been a consultant to health ministries in Russia, Uruguay, Zambia, and other countries.
AIDS is a widespread affliction in which a virus weakens the body's immune system and enables the occurrence of a serious infection or cancer. It is most often spread through sexual contact; contaminated needles or syringes shared by drug abusers; infected blood or blood products; or from pregnant women to their children. HIV is the virus known to cause AIDS.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact Dr. St. Lawrence at 601-484-0145 or jlawrence@meridian.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.