Season of HOPE
Successful HIV suppression and prevention requires more than linking people to treatment. Individuals living with HIV and those at risk require wraparound support to remain engaged in care, such as housing, mental health, and employment services. Accordingly, Chicago House implements a mobile health at home approach to reach Chicago’s most vulnerable communities, establishing a safety net of services under our (wide-reaching) roof.
Individuals living with HIV who are experiencing homelessness face additional challenges due to competing survival needs that disrupt daily routines and interfere with medication adherence. Furthermore, we know this population utilizes emergency departments more often to manage chronic conditions, having substantial health and economic consequences for each individual and for all Chicagoans.
Hope is within reach.
"Thanks to our expansive partnerships, Chicago House’s Health, Outreach, Prevention, and Education [HOPE] team is embedded throughout the city to provide comprehensive HIV services focused on engaging and retaining people living with HIV and high-risk groups in medical care, medication adherence, and prevention efforts,” shares Armando Garcia, Director of HOPE. “Specifically, our collaborative work with health systems has helped us track new HIV cases across zip codes, as well as update practices within hospitals, clinics, and treatment centers, to be more inclusive for communities impacted most by the virus.”
In 2015, Chicago House received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to partner with Mt. Sinai Medical Center and Erie Family Health Center, allowing us to hire additional staff to link patients living with HIV at these sites to our services. This laid the foundation for future expansion into health care systems, leading to our partnership with St. Bernard Hospital in Englewood.
Since 2020, our alignment with St. Bernard has opened the door to significant organizational shifts. By normalizing conversations around HIV through support with housing navigation, Chicago House has collaborated with the safety net hospital to mutually adjust our approach to delivering integrated health and social care for communities at risk of and living with the virus. Previously, only women who are pregnant were screened at St. Bernard; now, we have incorporated uniform screenings of HIV in the emergency department, where most patients enter the system. Our meetings with hospital staff helped us learn their values, giving us insight into how we can collectively build on their systems to work on HIV and housing with this community.
“Now, our HOPE Team is being called to meet individuals at their bedside to speak about HIV care and housing options in St. Bernard’s Emergency Department,” adds Garcia. “In the next phase, we will extend to more departments at the hospital, while also expanding partnerships through the South Side Healthy Community Organization. Overall, this will support more individuals living with HIV, particularly those who may not be aware of their diagnosis, while growing our capacity to serve Chicago’s Southside and the South Suburbs.”
This extensive work moves us closer to Getting to Zero new HIV transmissions by 2030! You can open the door to ongoing HIV support today by donating to Chicago House. Every dollar makes a difference in bringing health home!