Community Partnerships

Partnership for Unified Services in HIV (PUSH)

PUSH is a consortium of organizations that provide HIV services to patients in South Los Angeles, an underresourced community that has been hard hit by the HIV epidemic. Priorities are facilitating the highest standards of care and care coordination in the HIV screening, HIV prevention, linkage to care, retention in care, dental, mental health, and substance use disorder services offered by its partners.
PUSH was organized in late-2016 as a way to engage all HIV service providers on the Martin Luther King Jr Medical and Charles R. Drew University Campuses (MLK/CDU Campus). The goals are to create coordinated campus-wide screening, treatment, and prevention services, set aligned agendas for ongoing improvements in and expansion of HIV programs, and to develop collaborative quality and process improvement strategies that are data-driven and evidenced-based.

Coalition members include APLA Healthcare, OASIS Clinic, Drew CARES and Charles R. Drew University, Martin Luther King Jr Center for Public Health, Martin Luther King Jr Outpatient Center, and Martin Luther King Jr Community Hospital.

Contact Information:
David Lee, MPH, LCSW.
Phone: (323) 563-5802
Email: DavidLee@cdrewu.edu

Charles R. Drew University HIV/AIDS Education and Community Outreach Projects

Since 1984, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science has received public and private sector funding to implement and evaluate HIV/AIDS-related primary prevention programs targeting at-risk racial/ethnic minority populations residing in South Los Angeles and other regions of Los Angeles County. Staff of this project provide free educational workshops focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention and risk reduction targeting at-risk individuals in multiple settings.

Program staff provide educational workshops, at no cost, to the following audiences: elementary, secondary and post-secondary schools, substance abuse treatment facilities, churches, group homes, probation and parole offices, fraternities and sororities, and other sites in the community. Topics covered include: HIV/AIDS 101, STDs 101, the link between HIV transmission and other sexually transmitted diseases, birth control, reproductive anatomy and physiology, and community resources.

Contact Information:
Cynthia Davis, MPH, Program Director.
Phone: (323)563-9309
Email: CynthiaDavis@cdrewu.edu

Pacific AIDS Education and Training Center (PAETC)

The Pacific AIDS Education and Training Center at Charles R. Drew University (CDU PAETC) provides health care professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary to care for patients infected with HIV in underserved and vulnerable populations. Several CDU PAETC faculty possess particular expertise in substance abuse and mental health disorders that co-occur with HIV. As a result, many trainings focus on the interplay between these three dynamic forces.

Most trainings offer continuing education hours for providers. In early 2014, PAETC began offering on-line CEUs free of charge for selected trainings.
CDU PAETC is funded by the United States Health Resources and Services Administration’s Minority AIDS Initiative (MAI).

Mission

To improve the care of people living with HIV/AIDS by increasing the number of health care providers who are able to counsel, diagnose, treat, and medically manage persons with HIV infection and to decrease HIV transmission by promoting risk reduction
To provide health care professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary to care for HIV-infected patients in underserved and vulnerable populations
To increase the numbers of trained health care professionals caring for patients living with HIV
To give health care professionals the skills to educate and counsel their patients to prevent the transmission of HIV
To respond to the needs of communities of color and sexual and gender minority populations that are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS

Who We Serve

Physicians
Advanced Practice Nurse
Nurses
Physician Assistants
Pharmacists
Oral Health Professionals
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Professionals
Other health care professionals, especially Ryan White CARE Act-funded providers working with hard-to-reach and underresourced populations
Other health professionals providing direct service to people with HIV/AIDS

Services Trainings
CDU PAETC trainings build knowledge and skills through relevant HIV presentations especially designed for providers. Examples:

The Affordable Care Act & HIV in LA County: What Do We Know Now? Where Are We Going?
Teeth Chatter: HIV & Oral Health
Innocence Lost: Childhood Sexual Trauma & HIV
Urban TB, HIV & Social Determinants of Health
HIV and Crack Cocaine: What Clinicians Need to Know
What Happens on the Inside: HIV and Incarceration
Meth and HIV
HIV and Pregnancy
Service Delivery to Transgendered Clients
HIV and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Never Mix, Never Worry: Interactions Between HIV Medications and Other Substances
Engagement in HIV Care: How to Keep Patients Coming Back
From La Botanica to the HIV Clinic: Caring for Hispanic Patients Who Benefit from Both

Training Modalities

Individual and group consultations
Hands on clinical training
Didactic presentations
Skill building presentations
Technical assistance

Technical Assistance
CDUPAETC offers assistance to providers and/or administrators on any number of relevant healthcare topics (e.g., clinic capacity building, service system delivery issues, engagement in care, etc.) For example, if a a primary care clinic would like to begin offering HIV services, CDU PAETC will collaborate with local experts who will offer advice on reorganizing clinic structure to accommodate new services.

Clinical Consultations
CDU PAETC assists providers with increasing clinical competence through on-site and/or telephone consultation -- available both for medical and mental health/substance abuse issues. For example, advice for a provider seeing a patient who has a challenging substance abuse issue.

Contact Information:
1748 E. 118th Street, Building M
Los Angeles, CA 90059

Phone (323) 357-3402
Fax (323) 563-9333
Website: http://paetc.org

Derrick Butler, MD, Director/Principal Investigator. Email: derrickbutler@cdrewu.edu
Wilbert Jordan, MD, Medical Director. Email: wjordan@cdrewu.edu
Marican Jhocson, MSN, NP-C, RN, LNC, Nursing IPE Liaison. Email: marecanitajhocson@cdrewu.edu
Wilfredo Lopez, Program/ Finance Manager. Email: wilfredolopezjr@cdrewu.edu
Kevin-Paul Johnson, Program Coordinator. Email: kevin-johnson@cdrewu.edu

Dolls of Hope Project

The Dolls of Hope Project evolved out of a 1998 World AIDS Day Program initiated by faculty member, Cynthia Davis, MPH. In this project, staff and volunteers make cloth dolls for AIDS orphans and women, children or youth impacted by HIV.

To date over 6,000 Dolls of Hope have been distributed to agencies locally, statewide, nationally, and abroad. The Dolls of Hope project's primary goal is to "Break the Silence" surrounding HIV/AIDS in ethnic minority and underserved at-risk communities on a local and international basis. Ms. Davis has presented Dolls of Hope workshops at two International AIDS conferences: in Durban, South Africa in 2000 and in Bangkok, Thailand in 2004. Dolls of Hope have been distributed to local AIDS Service Organizations and/or NGOs in the following countries: United States, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Senegal, Brazil, Honduras, Cuba, Mexico, and India.

Contact Information:
Cynthia Davis, MPH, Program Director.
Phone: (323) 563-9309
Email: CynthiaDavis@cdrewu.edu

HIV Prevention Navigation Training Program

Through the South LA PrEP Navigation Program, we provide training opportunities for CDU students enrolled in the Enhanced Post-Baccalaureate Program to learn more about HIV prevention modalities and linking patients to HIV clinical care. The training program prepares students for actual work in the field, directly assisting patients with navigating the complex health payment systems, the myriad of HIV/STD prevention modalities (PrEP, PEP, condoms, STD treatment, HIV testing, etc.), and ongoing engagement in medical care. The training program consists of an initial 3 ½ day training, with a combination of didactic, interactive, and web-based training medthods that that teach students about the science behind biomedical HIV prevention modalities, patient navigation practices, HIV epidemiology, assessments, linkages, payment systems, outreach, and ongoing care.

Contact Information:
David Lee, MPH, LCSW.
Phone: (323) 563-5802
Email: DavidLee@cdrewu.edu