Medical College of Wisconsin funding for HIV program renewed

The Medical College of Wisconsin and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Research Institute received a three-year, $2.5 million award from the United States Health Resources and Services Administration to continue funding a statewide, community-based HIV care system for women, infants, and children.

Peter Havens, MD, MS, professor of pediatric infectious disease and a researcher at the Research Institute, is the project director for the grant. Dr. Havens also is the program director of the HIV Clinic at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Primary Care Support Network, which was organized in 1991, brings together nine agencies and more than a thousand community providers. Among the services provided are care for pregnant women with HIV and their newborn infants in Wisconsin, children and youth with HIV in Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan, and people with HIV ages 19-24 in southeast Wisconsin who are at high risk for not adhering to medical care, and women in northeast and southeast Wisconsin with risk factors which make it difficult to engage in care.

Besides minimizing HIV infections in newborn infants throughout Wisconsin, objectives include maximizing access to care, providing comprehensive culturally competent and coordinated HIV medical care and social services support.