Drawing from a nontraditional pathway into biomedical HIV research grounded in clinical and community-based work, this presentation explores how mentorship, community-academic partnerships, and creative public, private, and nonprofit funding mechanisms can expand HIV prevention, testing, and care. I will highlight innovative delivery models, including health vending machines, alongside lessons learned from sustaining community-centered research during periods of uncertainty. The talk concludes by emphasizing the importance of multilevel social support—strategic guidance from senior mentors and collective care among early-career peers—in navigating challenges and sustaining momentum.
This presentation is about how to design a public health campaign to increase awareness of long-acting injectable PrEP among Black men who have sex with men (BMSM) in Los Angeles County through community-driven recommendations. We conducted focus groups, which highlighted ideas about clear, factual messaging, authentic representation, trusted messengers, and careful visual choices to address stigma and medical mistrust among the BMSM community.
Public health campaigns offer one strategy to increase awareness of HIV prevention options among at-risk populations. However, what is currently lacking in the literature is research on the development of a long-acting injectable PrEP campaign for disproportionately affected populations. Therefore, this study solicited community recommendations from LMSM for a campaign to raise awareness of LAI PrEP among this population in LAC.
HIV incidence among Los Angeles County (LAC) residents who accessed syphilis testing through the LAC Department of Public Health-supported HIV and STD testing programs was examined and compared to the timing of syphilis diagnoses. Cox proportional hazards models found that syphilis diagnosis was strongly associated with HIV acquisition after adjusting for demographic factors (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] = 2.96; 95% CI: 2.42-3.62; p <0.0001). Individuals with syphilis had 196% higher risk of HIV acquisition compared to those without syphilis.
This presentation shares key lessons from the T.H3.E. Project on conducting community-driven HIV research with housing-insecure TGI women. Drawing from qualitative implementation data, it highlights strengths and challenges in data collection, including participant compensation, consent processes, community-rooted recruitment, and the impact of local political climates.
This presentation applies latent profile analysis (LPA) to characterize heterogeneous patterns of discrimination related to race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and HIV status among adults living with HIV. These intersectional discrimination profiles are examined in relation to substance use, HIV clinical indicators, psychosocial factors, and demographic characteristics. Profiles differed significantly in demographic composition and experiences of discrimination; however, individuals demonstrated comparable substance use and HIV-related outcomes across profiles, underscoring resilience among racially and sexually minoritized individuals living with HIV. The presentation conceptualizes resilience as a dynamic, contextually embedded process and introduces a qualitative component of the project that explores how resilience is developed, sustained, and enacted in the context of intersecting structural and interpersonal adversity.
This analysis explores how loneliness and substance use are related to different HIV risk outcomes, including PrEP use, STI incidence, condomless anal intercourse, transactional sex, sex while using drugs or alcohol, and number of sex partners. This longitudinal analysis is explored among a cohort of partnered sexual minority men in the United States with high prevalences of intimate partner violence and racial/ethnic minorities.
This presentation introduces new insights into measuring how overlapping experiences of racial and sexual orientation–based discrimination shape health and medical trust among Black and Latino gay and bisexual men. By comparing multiple methods for measuring intersectional stigma, the study found that a concise, intersectional scale performs nearly as well as longer, identity-specific measures—offering a reliable and efficient tool for research and community health efforts. The findings offer flexible strategies for capturing complex experiences of stigma and advancing more inclusive public health research.
Syndemic framework has been widely used to note the co-occurrence of intimate partner violence (IPV), depression, and engagement in HIV care among sexual minority men (SMM). We find that depressive symptoms fully mediated the association between past-year IPV victimization and future ART nonadherence, after controlling for past ART nonadherence. Our findings highlight a need for a trauma-informed approach for IPV survivors who are young Black SMM living with HIV, with specific emphasis on addressing depression among them to ensure improved treatment adherence.
The Los Angeles County PharmPrEP program leveraged California SB 159 to enable community pharmacies to initiate PrEP and PEP and expand HIV prevention access beyond traditional clinics. Across eight pharmacies, the program successfully reached priority populations to initiate new PrEP starts, demonstrated high client and staff satisfaction, and achieved linkage to ongoing medical care. The findings support community pharmacies as acceptable, feasible, and effective settings for equitable HIV testing and prevention initiation.