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The Mary Fisher CARE Fund was founded in 2000. After learning she was HIV-positive in 1991, Ms. Fisher spent most of the 1990s on a campaign of AIDS activism. She concluded that public advocacy alone couldn't change policies and minds in America. She knew a difference needed to be made through research and education.  In the spring of 2000, she announced the creation of the Mary Fisher Clinical AIDS Research and Education (CARE) Fund at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The founding and current director of the Mary Fisher CARE Fund is Dr. Michael Saag, a leading AIDS physician and researcher. The organization was founded on the following mission statement; "By blending research with advocacy, we will press for a greater difference in policy, in treatment and in care."
Michael Saag, MD, has built his professional life on the premise that medical science, clinical care and public policy can - and should - enrich each other. While still in medical training, he conceived the plan for an HIV outpatient clinic that would do scientific research as well as patient care. He founded such a facility at UAB in 1988 and remains its director, as well as director of UAB's Center for AIDS Research.
 Dr. Saag is on the NIH Office of AIDS Research Council, the Board of Directors of the Infectious Disease Society of America, and the International AIDS Society USA. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, has contributed more than 50 chapters to medical textbooks, and is senior editor of the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses.
Dr. Saag's pursuit of the Mary Fisher CARE Fund mission has taken him from the offices of the US Capitol to the airwaves of NPR, from the National Institutes of Health to the New York Times. As he seeks policy solutions for the challenges in his clinical work, Dr. Saag draws praise and support for his research work. In 2006, NIH made a $2.45 million grant to a project Dr. Saag heads: creation of an electronic network to pool treatment data from 15,000 patients at seven AIDS research centers nationwide. Dr. Saag calls it "a new paradigm for clinical investigation – the first formal way to track HIV/AIDS treatments and outcomes on a broad, comprehensive scale in real time." |
