Using social capital to improve clinical education programming

Reducing HIV health disparities requires partnership between community-based providers and academic medical centers. New federal calls for universal HIV screening further underscores the critical importance of strengthening connections between front-line primary care providers and HIV specialists.

The NY/NJ AETC is funded by HRSA to train clinicians on HIV/AIDS and designed an initiative to establish long term training relationships with primary care providers. The initiative applied social capital theories to come up with new approaches to engage this historically hard to reach provider population for AETC training. A baseline assessment of AETC programming was completed and an index of outreach need was developed.

The presentation will discuss 1) the translation of social capital theory into clinical education program design using findings from literature reviews, 2) lessons learned identifying strategic organizations and providers, including engaging professional associations and social service agencies to assess community and member need for clinical HIV education and, 3) the process of developing and evaluating projects to meet the goals. Pilot projects with public hospitals and community health centers will be described. Evaluation instruments will be shared. The curriculum for a certificate in community-based HIV care was also developed and will be presented.

Since the program inception, AETC training partners have completed 679 trainings reaching 5,401 participants from target communities, clinical educators completed 42 community needs assessments, and 29 clinicians (MD, NP, and RN) have enrolled in an intensive clinical training and mentorship program.