Connecting Resources for Urban Sexual Health

The overall goal of the CRUSH project is to enhance and extend a response to the local HIV/AIDS epidemic in Alameda County with a set of innovative, evidence-based interventions across the continuum of HIV prevention and care, targeting individuals and communities most vulnerable to HIV. The East Bay AIDS Center, in partnership with the University of California San Francisco's Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, the Gladstone Institutes, and several key community-based organizations, are engaging in a participatory partnership to enhance and implement HIV services which target the East Bay's highest risk population- young men who have sex with men (Y/MSM). Specifically, the CRUSH Project is designed to evaluate a combination of program approaches to address the sexual health care needs of young gay men of color and their sexual partners by enhancing the current program activities of the Downtown Youth Clinic (DYC). We hypothesize that we can reduce the impact of HIV among Y/MSM by expanding the current DYC services structure in two ways. We intend to expand HIV testing, and linkage to and retention in care for youth who test HIV positive, providing them with intensive risk-reduction counseling and antiretroviral treatment, and thereby ultimately reducing the risk of further HIV transmission. And we intend for the first time to offer a comprehensive combination package of preventive services to HIV-negative youth, including routine accesses to HIV/STI screening and treatment, and access to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). The CRUSH Project will also have a substudy that will enroll HIV-negative participants who are eligible to receive PEP. The substudy will evaluate the tolerability and acceptability of a 28 day course of Stribild® given as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) to prevent sexual acquisition of HIV-1 in Y/MSM of color.