Advocacy, Awareness & Access: Engaging Community Partners to Provide HIV Outreach & Testing to Vulnerable Populations in Philadelphia

Drexel University College of Medicine at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children performs youth focused HIV education and testing predominately in neighborhoods surrounding the hospital in North Philadelphia. This program began in October 2003 as the first healthcare institution in Pennsylvania to be granted a license to perform multiple sites HIV rapid testing.

Our practice model centers on identifying, locating and going to places we are needed the most by engaging community partnerships with established settings (i.e. - homeless shelters, domestic violence agencies, correctional facilities, colleges and universities, community centers, churches). These CBO's provide leadership as they fill the various social service needs within the City. Our outreach and testing program compliments the services offered by organizations. Furthermore, collaborations of this magnitude enable us to reach some of the most vulnerable people in Philadelphia who otherwise would never walk into our clinic.

These partnerships enabled us to provide services to over 5,000 people. Of those who tested positive all were linked into quality medical and social service care at St. Chris.

A by-product of our efforts to educate staff members at these community agencies earned us numerous advocates who speak on our behalf with other organizations and community members about our work thereby increasing both community awareness and the demand for our testing program.

Through the collaborative effort of an academic institution, health care facility, community agencies and members, we've been able to meet our goals of providing HIV education, prevention, identifying positives, linking and retaining them to care.