DC HIV Prevention Community Planning Group Meeting Re-cap

At last night’s meeting the CPG was officially introduced to Dr. Shannon Hader. Dr. Hader described the HIV/AIDS epidemic as “modern” citing that eradicating the epidemic will require modern and innovative solutions. Dr. Hader is looking forward to continued work with the DC community once the surveillance data is officially released and available to the public. She believes that together we can come up with innovative prevention strategies and use the results to determine how to further promote routine HIV testing.

HAA received word that the CDC Prevention Grant was officially extended an additional year to provide funding through December 2009. While this is exciting, it brings up many questions pertaining to the determinants for which agencies currently receiving funding through this grant will continue to do so as well questions around whether or not the DC HIV Prevention Plan will be extended or if this will be an opportunity to re-work the plan, using the surveillance data to determine where funding should be allocated. Potentially, a committee of CPG members will be formed to work with HAA to determine what the performance indicators will be for measuring the CBOs use of previously awarded funds. This seems like a great opportunity to re-vamp the Prevention Plan and align it with the epidemic in DC according to the data.

The surveillance report is completed, at the printer and expected to be released the week of 11/27 at several launch events. This report provides a thorough analysis (130 pages) of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the District and includes survival, mortality and perinatal data. A cautionary note to end users from Tiffany West: the report provides information on what is happening with the epidemic in DC, but not the why. The “why” will be included in the Epidemiologic Profile to be released in the summer of 2008 and will include information on a few special populations. The Scope of Work (SOW) for the CSA should be completed next week. Development of the Resource Inventory is underway and will be sent to the CPG for comment shortly. It will include questions around prevention efforts in use by CBOs as well as questions pertaining to care and treatment. The survey mechanism for CBOs will be finalized by the end of December. Although the initial deadline for completing the SOW has passed, Tiffany West assured us that there should be no problem completing the entire CSA on schedule (August 2008).

The next meeting of the CPG will be held on 12/13/2007 at 5:30 PM at 64 New York Ave NE.