Gregory Phillips II Given Third Coast CFAR Community Collaborative Award
The Third Coast Center for AIDS Research selected Gregory Phillips II, Ph.D., as a Winter 2021 Community Collaborative awardee for his work with the Chicago Latinx HIV/AIDS Community Collaborative Project along with Pedro Serrano, M.P.H. and Audrey French, M.D., of the Hektoen Institute/Core Center. Phillips is a faculty member at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH) and director of the EDIT Program.
The goal of the Chicago Latinx HIV/AIDS Community Collaborative project is to organize community collaborators who represent the diverse and heterogeneous communities of Latinx Chicagoans in order to discuss priorities for addressing the disproportionate impact of HIV on Latinx communities, particularly men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender individuals, and adolescents.
Phillips further explains that “rather than work with a single agency or in a specific community area, this project intentionally has included a group of individuals from a variety of backgrounds and experiences to ensure any subsequent project is culturally appropriate.”
The agencies represented in the Chicago Latinx HIV/AIDS Community Collaborative include: ALMA, CALOR, Center on Halsted, Chicago House, CORE Center, Haymarket Center, Howard Brown, Puerto Rican Cultural Center, and TPAN.
“In 2018, Latinx sexual minority men made up about 1 out of 5 of HIV diagnoses, and 2 out of 3 were under 35 years old. The local HIV workforce providing programs and services to Latinx communities know that in order to End the HIV Epidemic, we need to increase the uptake of HIV prevention and treatment strategies, and reduce health disparities. The aim of this community-academic partnership is to develop community-engaged and culturally responsive research studies to address HIV/AIDS priorities specific to the Latinx community in Chicago. We are excited to build off the previous community-academic partnership between CALOR and ISGMH, and expand to include a cadre of partners across the metropolitan area,” said Serrano.