International Community Health Services (ICHS) Health Education team has been selected as a nominee in the 2024 North Urban Human Services Alliance (NUHSA) Outstanding Human Services Program Awards Celebration.

One of ICHS’ newest initiatives, since its launch, ICHS’ Health Education team has advanced equitable HIV prevention services for our community.

“[ICHS’] Health Education team has inspired us,” said NUHSA in the award announcement. “Their efforts have been key in ICHS proudly providing linguistically and culturally appropriate HIV prevention services.”

While HIV care has made enormous progress around the globe, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported in July of this year that stigma and discrimination remain significant barriers to accessing HIV-related care.

ICHS’ Health Education team launched in August 2022, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative to serve individuals who have been marginalized from the health care system.

As of April 2024, their efforts have led to a 45% increase of HIV screenings of ICHS patients. And have led to expanding access to life-saving pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications to help 80 ICHS patients regularly receive and stay on this medication — nearly double the number of patients then in 2022.

Due to a range of social, economic, and demographic factors, new infections are highly concentrated among certain groups. ICHS’ Health Education Team has closed critical care gaps in HIV screenings through targeted patient outreach and education programs and staff training.