September 14, 2006

Plan to Streamline and Integrate HIV/AIDS Services in Harlem, South Bronx and central Brooklyn

While many city dwellers were escaping the heat in August, the New York City Communities of Color HIV/AIDS Coalition (NYCCOCHAC) continued to work diligently on a strategy to allocate $2.6 million to create HIV/AIDS prevention and care networks through community and government partnerships. This past June, the New York City Council recently earmarked the funds for NYCCOCHAC to operate a 3-year Special HIV/AIDS Project of Regional Significance (SHAPRS), funneling badly needed funds to some of the communities most affected by HIV/AIDS in the city, including Central and East Harlem, the South Bronx and north/central Brooklyn.

Drawing on the experiences of diverse coalition members and working with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, NYCCOCHAC has designed the plan to better coordinate and maximize the expertise and power of organizations that have already been providing services in these communities with very few resources, the city government that for years has worked against the real inclusion of community in their public health planning and programs, and the NYC public hospital system, the medical giant that often competes against the on-the-ground community-based organizations for ever shrinking AIDS care resources.

RFPs are scheduled to be released to the community by the middle of October, and, with all things being equal, community-based organizations run by and dedicated to serving people of color that are physically sited in the area they propose to serve will receive preference for funding. Groups are strongly encouraged to partner with public medical sites and other community-based organizations in their neighborhoods in order to test more people for HIV and provide better prevention tools for those who test negative as well as swifter care and treatment for those who test positive. This community-level work is further supported by centralized funding for technical assistance and a social marketing campaign to promote the SHAPRS model of testing, care, and prevention within these three hardest-hit areas and targeting specific high-risk populations of the contract awardees.

AIDS service providers and advocates have been seeking ways to provide integrated, sustainable services for a long time, and the NYCCOCHAC plan is promising. A member if the NYCCOCHAC, terri smith-caronia, Housing Works NYC advocacy director, said, "This has the potential to be the start of an integrated approach to HIV/AIDS in this city that is built on community involvement and sound public health principles and has a goal of ending AIDS as an epidemic here in NYC. We hope it will be a model for other hard-hit communities."

For more information on the RFPs, contact terri smith-caronia, at smith-caronia@housingworks.org.