New AAHU Fellows Armed With the Science to Fight HIV

The path to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic is no longer shrouded in mystery.

"The single most important thing that needs to happen is to get as many of the 1.1 million Americans living with HIV on care and treatment," says Phill Wilson, president and chief executive officer of the Black AIDS Institute. That happens by ensuring that those at high risk of HIV infection take advantage of medical and behavioral prevention strategies, and those with HIV get treatment so they will be less likely to transmit the disease to others.

But there is a caveat: "You cannot make that happen if either the general population or the people responsible for educating the general population don't have a high level of HIV science and treatment literacy," Wilson says.

The African American HIV University (AAHU) Science and Treatment College, sponsored by the Black AIDS Institute and the University of California Los Angeles Center for World Health, is tackling that challenge head-on by educating a new class of Fellows on the science of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. The curriculum covers such topics as human biology, virology, epidemiology and biomedical interventions. The 19 Fellows attended the first of four training modules in August, where they heard such lectures as "Immune Responses to HIV" and "Microbicides for HIV Prevention."

The second training module took place in November and focused on community mobilization. The third session, in March 2014, will focus on project development, and the final training will consist of a symposium and graduation next June.

Between each training, there's a 90-day internship or practicum during which the Fellows must put their new knowledge into practice in their local communities. Each must build a Black Treatment Advocates Network in his or her city by recruiting a minimum of 50 active participants. The Fellows must also achieve four objectives:

* Sponsor at least one scientific educational forum each month.

* Develop an initiative that helps PLWHA disclose their status.

* Create a patient navigation initiative to help people get and stay in care.

* Develop an advocacy initiative that focuses on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion.

Other partners in the Science and Treatment College include the Centers for AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The pharmaceutical company Gilead also serves as a sponsor, although it plays no role in the development of the curriculum.

The program is particularly effective because it goes beyond the confines of the classroom, says Jeffrey D. Klausner, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of medicine in UCLA's Division of Infectious Diseases and the Program in Global Health, and one of AAHU's faculty members.

"What's great is, it's a combination of learning new information, but in a way in which the Fellows are not passively sitting in a lecture hall," Dr. Klausner says.

Thomas J. Coates, Ph.D., director of the UCLA Program in Global Health, agrees: "The learners were highly engaged, asked difficult and challenging questions, grappled with the material and had many good ideas for advancing HIV science, treatment and prevention."

For some Fellows, this was not their first experience with AAHU. Juan Pierce, executive director of the Minority Health Consortium in Richmond, Va., graduated from AAHU's Community Mobilization College in 2011. "I enrolled in the Science and Treatment College because my participation in the Community Mobilization College increased my agency's capacity and our ability to service the MSM population," Pierce says. "Now I'm able to incorporate some of the things I'm learning about the science behind HIV testing into the work that I do."

The Fellows are also documenting their experiences with the Science and Treatment College by blogging about them. One Fellow, Kendra Taylor of Chicago, describes how she urged a group of physicians to explain to their patients more thoroughly the science of what's going on inside their bodies. "I learned in depth about how smoking [affects] the body and PLWHA and I have not picked up a cigarette since," she writes. She went on to explain that if doctors expounded on the science of HIV, they would have healthier patients.

The impact of the college will be felt immediately as the Fellows take the information into their individual communities.

"Our Science and Treatment College Fellows are being trained by the leading researchers in HIV," says Raniyah M. Copeland, director of training and capacity building for the Black AIDS Institute. "They are developing projects to ensure that communities hardest hit by HIV have access to the best tools and information to end AIDS."

Tamara E. Holmes is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who writes about health, wealth and personal growth.