High-impact prevention and surveillance programs for health departments - this application is for the five-year funding opportunity announcement for health departments to implement an integrated and…

High-impact prevention and surveillance programs for health departments - this application is for the five-year funding opportunity announcement for health departments to implement an integrated and comprehensive HIV surveillance and prevention program to prevent new HIV infections and achieve viral suppression among persons living with HIV. This project will promote and support improving health outcomes for persons living with HIV through achieving and sustaining viral suppression. Activities will focus on reducing health-related disparities by using quality, timely, and complete surveillance and program data to guide HIV prevention efforts. These core activities can be contained within two categories: (1) program prevention; and (2) program surveillance. HIV prevention and surveillance programs will focus on the prevention of new HIV infections to improve the health of people with HIV. This project will integrate the work of the office of aids's (OA) HIV surveillance and prevention evaluation and reporting (sper) branch and HIV prevention branch to address the emerging syndemic of HIV, HCV, and stis in california, as outlined in the 2022-2026 ending the epidemics: addressing HIV, HCV, and stis in the california strategic plan. Through this plan, california addresses HIV as a syndemic with HCV and other stis though a social determinants of health lens, highlighting: a) racial equity, b) housing, c) access to healthcare, d) mental health and substance use, e) economic justice, and f) stigma. OA will imbed these practices into service delivery to improve health equity efforts in funded jurisdictions by coordinating these approaches to HIV prevention and treatment resulting in positive health outcomes for all. The california EHE plan will coordinate the work of six phase i EHE counties through 2029: building on and updating their existing EHE plans annually. The six phase i counties comprise the california consortium: alameda, orange, riverside, sacramento, SAN bernardino, and SAN diego. The six counties are in various geographic regions and have differing prevention needs for their distinct populations. Thus, california will maintain an EHE coordinator at the state-level as well as in each one of the six california consortium counties. The work of our EHE plan will: increased local availability and accessibility of innovative HIV testing services resulting in increased HIV screening and annual rescreening among EHE priority populations; build the capacity for rapid linkage to care, art and prep in a status-neutral framework, to better serve EHE priority populations at the intersection of mental health, substance use and housing status in EHE counties; build the capacity of EHE counties to use novel, evidenced based approaches to link clients to prep/PEP; enhance data to care response for EHE priority populations; and enhance community engagement to recruit new voices and non-traditional partners to the HIV/stic/HCV planning table and to continuously improve EHE interventions.