The Midwest AETC (MAETC) Program is designated to cover a 10-state service area, namely Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The area has large metropolitan cities and sparsely populated rural areas that vary widely in demographic and epidemiologic characteristics. IL, IN, MI, and OH have denser populations and larger percentages of racial and ethnic minorities compared to rural states such as IA, KS, MI, and NE. MI and OH have the highest poverty rates in the region, while IL and MI account for the highest rates of people living in unstable housing. The service area is home to 127,573 people with HIV (PWH), accounting for 13% of all new HIV diagnoses in the US in 2021. Forty-two percent (42.4%) of PWH identify as AA/Black, making them the largest group, followed by Whites (37.6%) and Hispanics (13.0%). The service area also includes seven prioritized jurisdictions that are the focus of the Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative. Services will be targeted to physicians, nurses, physician assistants, social workers, mental health professionals, community health workers, pharmacists, and dentists (health care team members) who are capable of and who intend to provide care and treatment to people with or vulnerable to HIV. The MAETC will be led by a Central Office located within the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and eight Local Partners (LPs). Six LPs will be in academic institutions (Universities of Cincinnati, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and Wayne State University) and two in Ryan White-funded clinics that provide wide-spectrum HIV care services (Eskenazi Health and KC CARE Health Center). The following six programmatic components will be implemented in alignment with the National HIV AIDS Strategy: Foundations of HIV, to educate and train primary and non-primary care team members currently not involved in HIV care t
o increase their ability to prevent new HIV infections, identify PWH who are undiagnosed or out of care, and link patients not on antiretrovirals to care; Capacity and Expertise Expansion, to increase the ability of health care team members currently involved in HIV care to offer quality services based on current national treatment guidelines and standards and increase the skills to offer comprehensive care to PWH; Practice Transformation (PT), to increase the capability of 13 health care delivery sites to implement system-level changes and enhance clinical practice to improve the provision of care and treatment of PWH and prevention of HIV in priority populations at increased risk; Interprofessional Education (IPE) to build the capacity of faculty in health professions programs (HPPs) from two Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) to provide foundational knowledge in interprofessional collaborative practice and HIV prevention and care; Minority AIDS Initiative to increase the capacity of three additional PT facilities predominantly serving minorities, to assist faculty in HPPs from one additional MSI through IPE, and train minority-serving providers to incorporate HIV prevention, care, and treatment into their practices; and EHE Initiative to implement strategies, interventions, and approaches that address the unique training needs of the health care workforce and organizations in seven EHE-funded jurisdictions to reduce new HIV infection in the Midwest. The MAETC will annually bring together leaders from all 18 RWHAP Parts A and B and EHE Program Administrators from the service area through the Policy Training Advisory Council (PTAC) to discuss changes in the care systems, new or remaining training gaps to be addressed, and MAETC’s impact on quality and capacity of HIV care in the region. The PTAC assessment of MAETC’s impact on workforce capacity and quality of HIV prevention and care in the region includes recommendations on intervention strategies and prioritie
s for each program ye