Medical Students Team Up with Community to Increase HIV Testing
An HIV testing project led by Sonjia Kenya, Ed.D., M.S., M.A., director of community health programs at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Jay Weiss Institute for Health Equity, is reaching increasing numbers of people thanks to help from medical students and other volunteers.
Funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Kenya’s CHAMP Project (Community-Based HIV Awareness & Testing for Minority Populations) conducts rapid HIV testing in neighborhoods such as Overtown, Liberty City and Little Haiti.
Kenya and her staff hope to test 5,000 people by the end of this year, and medical students from the Social Medicine Pathway were among the first to volunteer for the cause. Second-year medical student and pathway member Santiago Montana first approached Kenya to express his interest in becoming a certified HIV tester and then encouraged his classmates to join him. While the CHAMP program was still in its early stages, students attended HIV training sessions and helped facilitate HIV awareness events in Liberty City and Overtown.
“The students are creating their own bonds with the community members and becoming more culturally competent by volunteering. It has turned out to be an amazing teaching tool for students focused on health disparities,” Kenya said. “Local residents take note of their involvement and that really helps build trust, which makes our jobs as educators and implementation specialists that much easier.”
Kenya has also received important help from Sylvester’s Disparities and Outreach Core. Claudia Gordon, born and raised in Liberty City, is a research specialist with rich relationships in the community and helped Kenya’s team host a World AIDS Day celebration that provided dinner, education, and HIV testing to 75 people in Liberty City.
Alex Moreno, M.P.H., and his testing team from the Division of Adolescent Medicine also jumped in to help Kenya. The team, which includes Miami-Dade’s HIV counselor of the year, Shayna Jefferson, is helping to train Kenya’s team. Before the project staff was hired, they were there to provide testing services at CHAMP outreach events on World AIDS Day (December 1, 2016) and National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (February 7, 2017). BreAnne Young, M.S.P.H., program coordinator for the CHAMP project, said the adolescent medicine crew has been an invaluable resource. “Not only were they highly efficient, but they were attentive to the needs of every participant who came through. We couldn’t have asked for a better source of help.”
Research has shown that black and African-American populations continue to face the most severe burden of HIV and AIDS of any racial/ethnic group in the nation. With the strides that have been made in HIV research, Kenya believes that HIV should be a chronic, manageable condition for anyone who has been affected.
“Despite all of the clinical advances, the communities suffering the biggest problems with HIV don’t know anything about those discoveries, and most often are communities of color,” Kenya said. “Our job is to take this information and the necessary resources to them so that they can keep themselves healthy.”
Liberty City community health worker Jakisha Blackmon said, “Our staff may seem small, but our team is campus-wide. I have no doubt that we’ll be able to reach our goal thanks to the all the help we’re receiving from staff, faculty, and students
here at the U!”
To learn more about the CHAMP program and upcoming events, please contact BreAnne Young, program coordinator, at [email protected] or call 305-243-5102.