National HIV Training and Technical Assistance Program for Urban Indian Organizations - The National Council of Urban Indian Health (NCUIH) requests $1,500,000 annually for four years (total request: $6,000,000) to establish the National HIV Training and Technical Assistance Program for Urban Indian Organizations, a coordinated national initiative designed to strengthen the organizational and workforce capacity of Urban Indian Organizations (UIOs) to improve HIV prevention, testing, linkage to care, treatment, and viral suppression among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) people living in urban communities. Although approximately 71% of AI/AN people now reside in urban areas, no national Native-specific infrastructure currently exists to provide coordinated HIV workforce development, implementation support, and technical assistance for the Urban Indian health system. Through this cooperative agreement, NCUIH will fill this critical gap by establishing the first coordinated national HIV training and technical assistance infrastructure dedicated to supporting UIOs. The project will provide culturally responsive training, individualized TA, leadership development, peer learning, and implementation support while aligning organizational capacity-building efforts with the HIV care continuum. During years one and two, project activities will focus on strengthening HIV testing and screening systems; year three will emphasize linkage to care; and year four will focus on retention in care, treatment, and viral suppression. The project is organized around five integrated objectives that provide a consistent implementation framework throughout the four-year project period. First, NCUIH will establish the staffing, partnerships, technology, and organizational infrastructure necessary to support a national HIV training and TA program. Second, NCUIH will conduct annual needs assessments to identify organizational strengths, workforce needs, and priority technical assistance topics across the UIO network. Third, NCUIH will develop and implement a comprehensive national training and TA program that includes webinars, self-paced virtual trainings, leadership and topic-specific learning collaboratives, individualized technical assistance, regional HIV training institutes, conference-based education, peer-to-peer technical assistance, and a national HIV resource center. Fourth, NCUIH will develop, culturally adapt, and disseminate evidence-based HIV prevention, education, and implementation resources specifically designed for UIOs and urban AI/AN populations. Finally, NCUIH will implement a comprehensive evaluation and continuous quality improvement process to assess project effectiveness, strengthen organizational capacity, and inform ongoing program refinement. By leveraging NCUIH's trusted relationships with UIOs and combining broad dissemination of evidence-based training with intensive implementation support, the project will establish a sustainable national infrastructure that strengthens the urban Indian health system and improves HIV prevention and care outcomes for AI/AN communities nationwide.
