This community workshop hosted by our Equitable Injectable PrEP in LA County Initiative featured a panel of Black and Latino/a cisgender MSM and transgender women (BLMSM/TW) who shared their experiences with injectable PrEP in Los Angeles County.
Presentation by Khadesia Howell that aims to better understand intersectional stigma and discrimination and its effects on mental health, as well as to improve intersectional stigma assessment tools. It is a qualitative study executed by doing in-depth semi-structured interviews as a way for Black SMM to ‘think aloud’ and tell their stories and experiences. From this we were able to better understand how this marginalized group responds to stigma and discrimination and how they interact with intersectional stigma assessment tools.
Presentation by Taj Morgan that described how we used human-centered design to develop an innovative mobile app to improve HIV care continuum outcomes and overall well-being among young Black gay and bisexual men living with HIV. This process, which involved co-creating the app with end users and HIV service providers, resulted in a program with high feasibility, acceptability, and likely uptake.
Presentation by Dr. Toluwani Adekunle that highlights the experiences of Black and Latine HIV care consumers that foster medical mistrust. These are experiences as pertaining to care consumers’ perceptions of healthcare provider behaviors that invoked feelings of stigma/discrimination, thereby influencing care consumers’ levels of trust and mistrust.
For this study, we provide a plan on the equity-focused approaches aimed at optimizing engagement of young Black LGBTQ+ individuals across the PrEP care continuum by partnering with House & Ball Community (H&BC) members using social work guiding principles.
Presentation featuring Laura Hoyt D’Anna and Everardo Alvizo that describes their study aims to address the HIV epidemic by improving PrEP linkage, uptake, and retention among Black and Latinx same-gender loving men, transgender women, and other gender-diverse persons in Long Beach, CA. This is a mixed methods study designed to explore barriers and facilitators to engagement along the PrEP care continuum from the viewpoints of community members and current and potential PrEP providers. Findings will inform the following: 1) the Long Beach HIV/STI Strategic Plan, 2) a culturally appropriate PrEP readiness and facilitation tool, and 3) intervention opportunities to be studied in future research.
This report highlights the urgent need to consider innovative strategies to connect BLCW with PrEP services. As part of a NIMH EHE supplement project, the UCLA CHIPTS received funding to develop and pilot an implementation strategy to increase PrEP awareness and optimize PrEP uptake among BLCW through the use of the PlushCare telemedicine application.
This project was led by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in collaboration with the California Community Foundation to advise and provide insights on how to reach communities of color and those hardly reached to educate, build trust, and disseminate vaccines in South Los Angeles given historical experiences with medical mistrust. The efforts center around three goals, which are to: (1) Facilitate community, public, private, and governmental partnerships to reduce, COVID-19 vaccine inequity. (2) Educate communities of color in South LA about the COVID-19 vaccines through virtual town halls, and (3) Navigate communities of color in South LA on how to access available COVID-19 vaccines.
Oral Presentation at the CHIPTS HIV Next Generation Conference featuring Erik Storholm held in January 2022. The presentation examined the associations of multiple latent predictor variables known to be related to HIV outcomes such as socioeconomic distress, intimate partner violence, depression, resilience, and HIV related social support with HIV care engagement among. The presentation discusses test whether healthcare empowerment mediates the impact of these latent predictor variables have HIV care engagement.