Cardea Center for Health and Human Services

OMH HIV/AIDS PARTNERSHIP - The primary goal of the OMH Minority Community HIV/AIDS Project is to prevent increasing HIV health disparities among Latino/Hispanic college-bound youth. Cardea is working extensively with two minority universities and local community health centers in South Texas in implementing a range of educational and health promotion interventions (individual, group, campus-wide) to increase awareness among this vulnerable population; As well as promote HIV/STD screening and referral services for those testing HIV positive. During this reporting period, Cardea and its campus partners reached 1049 students through classroom/booth/project-led events, 106 HIV screening tests, and 174 students received risk reduction counseling. Milestones accomplished included development and pilot testing of a new curriculum tailored for male Latino students, training peer leaders on the existing curriculum for female students, completion of a digital storytelling project, acceptance of a professional presentation by the American Public Health Association, and initial development of the guidebook titled Addressing HIV/AIDS Prevention at Minority Colleges and Universities. All educational and service goals were surpassed.

CHRISTIE'S PLACE - Cardea staff managed and analyzed project client data summaries (December 2012 and June 2013) reflecting demographics, health care service delivery, health status indicators (historical and current), and project service implementation on a cumulative basis. We also presented our evaluation results at the national grantee meeting and during monthly local Christie's Place and partner agency meetings. During this last year, evaluation activities also included key informant interviews and reporting on these qualitative data. Finally, during January-June 2013 we collaborated with program staff and the national evaluators at Johns Hopkins University on developing updated data shells/templates and client survey instruments for use post-June 2013 for the agency's newly-funded Retention in Care project.

Other programs - cooperative agreements to support comprehensive school health programs to prevent the spread of hiv and other important health problems; social innovation.