Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center Receives Renewed Funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration HIV/AIDS Bureau
For nearly four decades, physicians and scientists have fought the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Due to their efforts, what was once a fatal diagnosis is now a manageable chronic disease for millions of people worldwide.
Since 1988, the University of Illinois Chicago has been on the front lines of this battle as home to the Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center. Based in the College of Medicine’s department of family and community medicine, the center has trained thousands of health care workers to treat people with HIV and AIDS and reduce new diagnoses.
Now, renewed funding from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration HIV/AIDS Bureau will help the center continue its critical work beyond its upcoming 40th anniversary.
The five-year, $19 million grant will help fund the center’s activities across 10 states as part of the national AIDS Education and Training Centers network. Established as part of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, the network supports eight regional centers that train local health care professionals and work with organizations to improve their HIV services.
The funding comes at a pivotal time for HIV/AIDS care providers, as the generation that confronted the emergence of the disease begins to retire and the care that patients need evolves.
“We’re building a new workforce of people who identify as HIV providers, who go on to become HIV medical directors or lead the opening of LGBTQ clinics,” said Amanda Wilkins, executive director of the center. “Even if they don’t go on to become HIV providers, our training helps reduce stigma and support professionals to be advocates for embedding HIV screening and prevention into their practices.”
Each center supports increased HIV testing, better prevention through education and drugs such as PrEP and connecting newly diagnosed patients to comprehensive care. By concentrating these efforts in regions and populations with high incidences of HIV, the network supports a national initiative to reduce new HIV diagnoses by 90% by 2030.
“We’re talking about ending the HIV epidemic; it’s just incredible,” said Dr. Ricardo Rivero, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at UIC who retired this fall after leading the Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center for the past decade. “That we are going to be able to help do that with 37 years of experience under our belts is such a unique opportunity.”
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Learn more about the Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center and its training opportunities.