APAIT: Positively impacting LA's underserved communities

Groups like the Sidewalk Project are gathering volunteers to provide street medicine and care to people experiencing homelessness, many of whom are trans sex workers in need of basic care items beyond just clothes and food. These volunteers come to those in need with lived experiences, as many of them have experienced homelessness themselves, making them easier to trust as they provide important services like HIV and trans wellness care.

Leadership groups formed by sex workers are helping to reduce HIV rates by traveling door to door and hosting meetings to educate people on HIV/AIDS awareness and how those with the disease can care for themselves, encouraging regular visits to clinics and antiretroviral therapy use. The program began in 2013 and now has 12,000 sex workers from around the country who are trained to provide aid and advocate for those with HIV.

Members of a local Black, LGBTQ+ community joined together with Chicago's COVID Rapid Response team to bring COVID-19 vaccinations to the city's Black and Latino LGBTQ+ population — a group that is severely lagging behind the general population in terms of vaccination rates.

Chesterfield County, Virginia implemented a multi-faceted response to the opioid crisis, including a jail-based recovery program, Helping Addicts Recover Progressively (HARP), that brings people in recovery to the local jail to talk about addiction and treatment resources. Combined with other efforts, overdose deaths have dropped by half in a single year, and around 4,000 people have participated in HARP.

The South Side Queer Farmer Convergence provides culturally-affirming community gatherings that effectively reduce isolation, promote emotional healing, and foster mental wellbeing for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC farmers facing significant social stressors and discrimination.

After sudden U.S. government funding cuts jeopardized South Africa's HIV programs, Limpopo's Hlokomela Clinic quickly reorganized around existing resources, training community health workers to identify and encourage farm workers to visit still-operational clinic sites for HIV testing. By leveraging volunteers, they partially offset the impact of losing their dedicated HIV testing outreach team and program funding.

Mothers to Mothers trains and employs local women living with HIV/AIDs to become community health workers, providing care and services to under-resourced clinics and direct to communities through door-to-door initiatives. Since forming in 2001, Mothers to Mothers has connected more than 15 million people with access to health services and has trained 1,200 women to become community health workers.

In an effort to combat overdoses in the LGBTQ+ community, some local spaces — like gay bars — are carrying Narcan. While not every gay bar in the area is on board with carrying Narcan, there are several individuals and local organizations working to push these venues to make a change and helping to ensure people who need it can access the potentially life-saving drug if they need it.

The Y+ Beauty Pageant empowers young people living with HIV to embrace their diagnosis and advocate for others despite the stigma associated with the condition. Participants in the beauty pageant then go out into their communities to be changemakers and lead education and awareness campaigns. Since 2014, the pageant has reached over 50,000 people through its various campaigns.

Black Men Heal Yoga is a free yoga class that provides a safe, healing space for Black men looking to explore tools like meditation, mindfulness and movement to combat stigma and take care of their mental health. Black Men Heal Yoga is funded by money raised through social media. 10 classes have been held so far, with more than 50 men being served and about $2,000 in donations being raised.