Blog Center for Community Health Partnership & Research Infectious Disease

Working to connect and coordinate local HIV/AIDS efforts

Written by Matthew Brown, MPH, manager of the Center for Community Health Partnership and Research at the Institute for Public Health


The Center for Community Health Partnerships continues to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders working in HIV/AIDS in St. Louis. The group first met last December, and assembled again in September 2015. At the first meeting participants gave short overview presentations to help familiarize the groups and individuals with one another. Attendees prioritized time for discussion, with the goal of finding areas for potential collaboration, or identifying gaps that we could work to address.

Photo from December 2014 meeting.

The second meeting included a detailed presentation from Rupa Patel, MD on her work with PReP, and additional discussion about what participants might want to get out of the meetings going forward.

The group decided to continue meeting roughly twice a year. We’re learning more about the other HIV/AIDS groups in town to avoid duplicating efforts.

Participants are especially interested in general networking outside of specific grants and projects, and also networking on less-discussed topics such as HIV/AIDS and the overlap with mental health or Tuberculosis.