During his training in the MD/PhD Program at the University of Chicago, Dr. Ostrow co-founded the first gay community health center, now the Howard Brown Health Center of Chicago. There he identified Hepatitis B as a common sexually transmitted infection (STI) among gay men, which led to his Chicago PI role in the CDC-funded Hep B Epidemiology and Vaccine Efficacy Studies (1976-81). As the founding PI of the subsequent Chicago MACS (1983-1985), then co-PI of the Coping & Change Study of Men in the Chicago MACS (1985-1999), and later founder of the Behavioral Working Group (BWG) of the MACS (1991-2011), he focussed on the relationship between sexual behavior, drug use and the evolution of HIV transmission and prevention among drug using MSM.
He has published 175 peer-reviewed papers, 50+ book chapters and presented 60+ times at International AIDS Conferences. He is an Investigator or consultant on most of the NIDA funded studies of drugs, alcohol and HIV in the MACS, including his own study of the Social and Risk Networks Assessment of younger Black MSM (2009-2011). This study led to a recently funded study of the dynamic roles of social and risk networks as drivers of the increasing epidemic of new HIV infections among younger Black MSM in Chicago. As the senior behavioral investigator in the MACS, he plans to use the upcoming open recruitment of men at highest risk of or recently infected with HIV to extend these studies to the geographically and racially diverse cohort of HIV+ and HIV- men.
Since the late ‘90s, Dr. Ostrow has been active in the movement to change failed national drug policies, such as cannabis prohibition, with more effective and compassionate policies, including regulation and legalization of cannabis use, integration of Cannabinoid Medicine training into the Medical Student curriculum, and the formation of a Community-Based Clinical Cannabis Research Network that can inform scientifically based MC treatment guidelines.