The purpose of the Policy Impact Core is to translate CHIPTS research findings into impacts on policy or actionable impacts on policy. In our communities, there remain significant gaps between our targeted efforts around HIV, substance use and mental health and the outcomes. These gaps can be due to systemic inequities linked with these comorbidities. Barriers to healthcare access, including inadequate healthcare coverage, are just the first of many factors. Criminalization, discrimination, poverty, and houselessness affect the lived experiences of those most affected by HIV, and leveraging CHIPTS research to inform policies that target these systemic inequities is our goal. Recently our efforts have centered on the effects of criminalization and poverty on individuals at risk of HIV, as well as policies supporting innovative solutions to facilitate their access to health services.
Check out our snapshot below!
On criminalization, our policy brief, Services for Re-Entry Populations: Policy Evidence and Recommendations, we outline opportunities to address intertwining epidemics through identifying the needs of incarcerated populations during re-entry. In Health Outcomes Associated with Criminalization and Regulation of Sex Trade, we focus on the public health effects of implementing four different frameworks to addressing sex trade, including criminalization, the Nordic or End Demand model, regulating sex trade and decriminalization.
On poverty, we illustrate recent findings with an infographic, HIV Risk Reduction and Earned Income Tax Credit, which identifies how anti-poverty policy solutions can have a very real (and positive!) impact on HIV risk reduction.
On facilitating health access, we cover topics addressed in by recent legislation. Efforts to increase access to HIV, STI and substance use services include Zero-Cost Preventive Care for Californians and Extended Coverage for STI Screenings and Contingency Management strategies. We highlight basic concepts behind an oft-used term, Medical Mistrust.
To promote greater understanding of biomedical innovations and how they might be implemented in communities, we documented key findings from the HPTN 083 study and what we know about the safety and efficacy of injectable PrEP. Our Executive Summary, Long-Acting Injectable Therapy for People with HIV, delivers key takeaways from our paper identifying lessons about long-acting injectable treatment in the substance use and mental health fields, two specialties with long histories of utilizing injectable medication. Our Associate Director Dr. Gabriel Edwards penned an article (en español) for lay audiences, summarizing the promise and challenge of injectable medication for HIV treatment and prevention.
As always, please visit the UCLA CHIPTS website for more resources and if you have any suggestions for future topics, please contact us!