The Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS recently opened a new location on First Street and Portland Avenue, closer to downtown than its previous space. (Courtney Pedroza/DD)
As Dec. 1 marks World AIDS Day, the Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS is gearing up to spread awareness and help promote healthy lifestyles for those with and without the disease.
Additionally, the center is hosting the “Aunt Rita’s Red Brunch” on Nov. 30 in honor of the awareness day, which includes a silent auction, cocktail mixer, brunch and quilt display.
“We have an ongoing series of gay community bar outreach events,” said Jon Martin, a prevention and education manager for the center. “We got out and promote condom use and safer sex.”
The Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS opened their new location, the Parsons Center for Health and Wellness, on First Street and Portland Avenue at the beginning of November. It was previously at 12th Street and McDowell Road and moved into the new space — the former KPNX Channel 12 building — to be closer to the light rail and downtown Phoenix.
At the new center, patients with HIV or AIDS can see doctors, pick up medication and receive mental health treatment in one location. The new location is a hub for many different services that were previously scattered.
“Many of the providers had never met before,” Executive Director Len Stewart said. “It was pretty cool to get everybody together under one roof.”
Stewart said they are the only medical nutrition service for people with HIV/AIDS in Maricopa County. Health care providers can refer patients to the center to see a medical nutritionist, who then provides a prescription for vitamins and supplements, Stewart said.
The center also uses a number of clinical trials to advance HIV medication research, and it houses a prevention team that teaches the public about the disease and distributes condoms and safe-sex information.
“We now focus on a new way of thinking about prevention,” Martin said. “We work with people who are HIV-positive so they can stop the spread of HIV to someone else.”
The center was supposed to open during the summer of 2012, but ran into issues along the way. Stewart said the biggest challenge was renovating the building, which was actually two buildings built into each other.
“It’s all about money,” Stewart said. “This is an about $8- to $10-million project and we did not have all of that money before we started construction. We had to take it in chunks and we could only build as far as the money we had.”
The center recognized everyone who helped it reach its $10 million goal by publishing an “honor roll of donors” with their name and amount donated. At the top of list is the Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation.
Laura Mitchell, the executive director of the Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation, said the company wanted to help the HIV/AIDS community because its namesake, Bob Parsons, lost two relatives to the disease. After the foundation realized how successful the center was, it was happy to donate. The foundation donated 80 percent of the new center’s funds.
Stewart said the Parsons Foundation and Phoenix City Councilman for District 4 Tom Simplot were the main partners pushing to get the necessary funds.
The center is working on a new program called “HIV University” that will teach three levels of courses about the diseases. In the 101 class, students will learn basic information; in the 102 class, a patient with HIV/AIDS and a pharmacist will teach about the disease; and in the 103 course, students will learn about medication and treatment.
“It is basically the same information from three different angles,” Martin said. “This way someone has well-rounded knowledge on the subject.”
Contact the reporter at asia.poole@asu.edu
Source: southwest - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNEtoFNO6oqFhdnPNK2GRCy9Ug7VyQ&url=http://downtowndevil.com/2013/11/29/51780/southwest-center-hiv-aids-downtown/
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