Connecting Resources for Urban Sexual Health

Summary

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.

Conditions

• HIV
• Sexually Transmitted Infections

Interventions

OTHER

Testing and linkage to care for Y/MSM

Implementation of strategies to enhance testing and linkage to care of Y/MSM, including social network testing and a youth outreach corps working with existing and new community partner agencies.

BEHAVIORAL

Engagement and retention for HIV-positive Y/MSM in care

Optimizing current HIV care and treatment services at DYC by implementing a patient peer mentoring component, a linkage and retention specialist, and psychosocial support for program staff.

OTHER

Engagement and retention for HIV-negative Y/MSM in sexual health services

Offering a highly effective combination HIV prevention strategy, including PrEP; warm-hand offs for high-risk negatives, nPEP; risk reduction counseling; frequent HIV and STI testing, including testing a highly sensitive method of detecting early HIV infection; and youth-focused programming.

DRUG

Stribild PEP Substudy

A substudy of 28 days of once-daily Stribild® initiated within 72 hours of a high risk sexual exposure for HIV post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of California, San Francisco

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jeff Burack, MD · East Bay AIDS Center (EBAC)

• Robert Grant, MD, MPH · Gladstone Institutes

• Janet Myers, PhD · UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

29 Years

Sex

MALE

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2013-05-31

Primary Completion

2017-03-31

Completion

2017-08-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations