Friends and Colleagues,

This month, we offer you resources that help adults guide teens toward healthy choices about substances, opportunities for service providers to support families impacted by opioids, a sampling of where PHIMC staff has been out and about recently, a huge shout-out to our community partners in HIV prevention, and a quick recap on the summer magic of Action Camp for LGBTQ+ young people.

We are also celebrating PHIMC’s 30^th anniversary and invite you to join us at the American Writers Museum on Thursday evening, November 14.

For 30 years, PHIMC has worked alongside partners, including nonprofit organizations, community-based organizations, cross-sector government agencies, and other institutions, to bridge gaps, leverage resources, and address oppressive policies that hurt people. PHIMC’s work could not exist without you, our allies in health justice.

Please consider joining us for our 30th Anniversary Celebration on November 14, 2024, or make a donation to support our work advancing health justice and strengthening public health.

Bonus: We're hiring, as you will see when you scroll down. Perhaps you or someone you know would like to join our team of innovative leaders in public health.

If you have questions or feedback on anything you see below, please reach out to info@phimc.org and someone on our team will respond.

Thank you, as always, for your support and partnership.

Sincerely,

Karen A. Reitan

President and Chief Executive Officer

As the Regional Implementation Group (RIG) wraps up another year and we move into Fiscal Year 2025, PHIMC is humbled by the work of our funded partners in providing high-impact HIV prevention services and testing in Suburban Cook County.

HIV is now a long-term manageable condition, “the key word being manage,” says Bryan Gooding, PHIMC Program Manager for HIV Prevention. “With proper management, people with HIV are able to live long, healthy, productive, and even sexually active lives!”

Science tells us that persons living with HIV who are in care, on medication, and have achieved an undetectable viral load, are unable to pass the virus on to others, highlighting treatment as prevention and the importance of early diagnosis and linkage to care.

In the period from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024, our partners provided 1760 rapid HIV tests to high-risk populations and 8420 routine HIV tests in clinical settings, identifying 24 new persons living with HIV, all of whom were successfully linked to care and medication within 30 days of diagnosis and receiving their confirmatory results.

In addition to providing HIV testing, our partners provided 591 STI/Viral Hepatitis tests, identifying 21 new positives, supporting 506 behavioral interventions, and linking 269 individuals most vulnerable to HIV to Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) – greatly reducing their chance of acquiring HIV in the future.

Pictured above: Bryan Gooding, PHIMC HIV Prevention Manager, with Proactive Community Services staff for National HIV Testing Day

Five of our partners are designated by the State of Illinois to provide Surveillance-Based Services, reaching out to individuals who may not be aware of their HIV status or who may have dropped out of care, linking them back to the care and services needed to live long, healthy lives.

The work of PHIMC and our funded partners plays an essential role in the Getting to Zero Illinois Plan and the National Strategy for Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. PHIMC would like to thank the following partners for moving us closer to our goal:

• AIDS Healthcare Foundation /CALOR
• Chicago Center for HIV Elimination
• Chicago House Social Services
• Chicago Recovery Alliance
• Chosen Family Network
• Christian Community Health Center
• City of Evanston Health & Human Services Department
• Corazón Community Services
• Howard Brown Health
• Kenneth Young Center
• Open Door Health Center of Illinois
• Proactive Community Services
• Puerto Rican Cultural Center
• South Suburban HIV/AIDS Regional Clinics
• Village of Oak Park Health Department 

PHIMC would also like to thank our Care Partner, AIDS Foundation Chicago, for their advocacy work and for connecting people living with HIV to critical services needed for engagement and retention in care.

For more information, please visit our website or contact Bryan Gooding at bryan.gooding@phimc.org

PHIMC staff pictured above, left to right: Bryan Gooding, Program Manager - HIV Prevention; Madeline Bieniarz, Communications Coordinator; Jay Diaz, Program Coordinator - Illinois Safe Schools Alliance; and Kelly Hiznay, Program Coordinator - AmeriCorps and Administration

Together, we can Show Up and Show Out for people living with and vulnerable to HIV and other chronic conditions. Thank you.

PHIMC’s Substance Prevention and Awareness Resource Kit (SPARK) was designed to support Chicago youth in developing healthy relationships with substances. This resource kit contains two sections: one for facilitators and one with free resources accessible to anyone interested in this work. The facilitator portal provides lesson plans and resources developed by PHIMC and its partners and to ensure the fidelity of the materials, PHIMC staff will train organizations on implementation.

Partnership Opportunity: PHIMC’s Regional Substance Use Prevention Integration Center (RSUPIC) program is looking to collaborate with organizations in the city of Chicago to help support our youth. There is so much great work happening in the city on behalf of youth, and this project seeks to provide additional support, guidance, education, and resources to Chicago-area educators and youth service providers.

Contact james.lones@phimc.org to learn more about these materials or to ask about training and partnership.

SPARK helps adults guide teens.

Other resources to support health equity can be found here on our website.

Interested in understanding how hiring CHWs can increase patient services and reduce overall costs for organizations? Take a glance at this fact sheet, Community Health Workers: Evidence of Their Effectiveness, from the National Association of Community Health Workers (NACHW) and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO).

To learn more about hiring a community health worker through the Opioid-Impacted Family Support Program, please contact Alisha Jani, PHIMC Program Manager for AmeriCorps and Workforce Development, at alisha.jani@phimc.org or visit our website.

Action Camp 2024 was absolutely magical 🌈✨

Our largest annual youth leadership convening, Action Camp is a 5-day sleepaway camp in August that brings together leaders from Genders and Sexualities Alliances (GSAs) across the state to learn from one another and shape the safer schools movement. This year, we were joined by 41 campers, 33 counselors and staff, 16 youth leaders, and 8 partner organizations in the woods. Our youth leaders created and facilitated engaging workshops and social events on a variety of topics, including Centering Latiné Voices, Queer Representation in Media, Self-Care, Impact of LGBTQ+ People in Modern Language, Genders Around the World, School to Prison Pipeline, and Environmental Justice.

PHIMC extends a heartfelt thank you to Youth Services of Glenview for co-hosting Action Camp since 2018 and for their unwavering support in making this year's camp a success. We also want to express our gratitude to our amazing partners: Center on Halsted, Chicago Public Schools, Youth Outlook, Wintrust, and Zurich.

We are deeply grateful to everyone—individuals, organizations, and businesses—whose support made it possible for LGBTQ+ young people and their allies to come together in the woods, fostering a community dedicated to shaping a better world. Thank you!

James Lones, Brittany Spralls, and Dr. Dan’iel Kendricks at National Night Out in Pullman

Brittany Spralls and James Lones at a Racial Healing Collaborative hosted by Luv Institute, which featured an unveiling of sculptures made by young people

Julio Flores at the National LGBTQ Health Conference 2024 at Emory University in Georgia

Julio Flores, Madeline Bieniarz, Jay Diaz, and James Lones at the Prevention First Conference for youth substance use prevention in September

Thursday, November 14, 2024, 6p – 8p

The American Writers Museum

Please join us on November 14, 2024 to celebrate PHIMC’s 30th year working to promote health justice and strengthen public health.

PHIMC is hiring for the following roles:

Learn more and apply at bit.ly/PHIMCwork