Exclamation Point!,
the Alive! Maryland Monthly Newsletter

December 2023

Exclamation Point! is your straight-to-the-point monthly newsletter for Maryland's primary care and infectious disease workforce, brought to your inbox by Alive! Maryland, led by HealthHIV. Each month we will feature key trainings and webinars, upcoming events, job opportunities, and other resources to help you in your work. We'll also highlight some of the impactful work and diverse perspectives of your colleagues across the State. 

In this issue:

• Alive! Maryland Offerings
• Points of View: Provider Perspectives
• Action Points: Upcoming Events
• Key Points: Featured Resources
• Job Openings
• Funding Opportunities

Want to spread the word about a job opening or funding opportunity from your organization? Know a special healthcare provider in Maryland who deserves the spotlight? Let us know by contacting info@AliveMaryland.org. Alive! Maryland is here to help you help Marylanders!

Click "[Message clipped] View entire message" at bottom of your page to read the newsletter in its entirety.

Alive! Maryland Offerings

Oral manifestations are the earliest indicators of HIV infection and can predict the progression of HIV/AIDS. Oral lesions occur in up to 50% of HIV-infected patients. Since oral lesions are considered the first clinical features of HIV infection, as well as highly predictive markers of immunosuppression, they can be useful for early testing, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.

This self-paced module from Alive! Maryland will discuss the various oral lesions that can occur in patients with HIV, treatment plans, and recommendations for follow up care.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Explain the different categories of oral lesions that may present in a patient living with HIV/AIDS.
• Identify the signs and symptoms associated with oral lesions commonly diagnosed in patients living with HIV/AIDS.
• Describe treatment options for managing oral lesions and alleviating their related symptoms in patients living with HIV/AIDS.
• Discuss the rationale for referring a patient to a dental professional for evaluation and biopsy of an oral lesion.

Points of View: Provider Perspectives

Each month we will highlight a Maryland provider in this section whose work is helping bring the State alive. If you have a colleague you think deserves some appreciation, let us know! Please email info@AliveMaryland.org and include the provider's name, role and affiliation, and contact details. We'll then reach out to your colleague with some brief interview questions.

Since its founding in 2020, the Alive! Maryland program has helped build capacity and expand the knowledge of the infectious disease and primary care workforce in the state of Maryland. 

Representing the tenets of “ALIVE,” which stands for Assess, Learn, Integrate, Visualize and Engage, Alive! Maryland prides itself on its work toward improving health outcomes across communities and counties in Maryland.

To commemorate the program and its work over the past three years, we spoke with two of the faces behind Alive! Maryland – Tawanna Davis, MA, who works on behalf of Infectious Disease Prevention and Health Services Bureau, MDH, and Melissa Kelley, EdD, CHES, who works on behalf of HealthHIV – about their backgrounds, their hopes for the future of Maryland’s healthcare workforce, and more. 

Read about their experiences below!

Action Points: Upcoming Events

Together Elevating and Advancing Community Health (TEACH) is a specialty training curriculum for Community Health Workers (CHWs) in Maryland to increase their knowledge of HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), viral hepatitis, and drug user health. Its goal is to reduce the rising rates of new infections and promote the health and well-being of individuals in an evidence-based, compassionate, and culturally-appropriate manner.

The TEACH Train the Trainer curriculum is designed to improve the knowledge of Maryland CHWs on HIV, STIs, viral hepatitis, and drug user health and prepare individuals to become trainers of the TEACH specialty curriculum. The Train the Trainer training is intended to prepare those who are already engaged in training to use facilitative skills to promote learner engagement, engage in reflective practice, use critical thinking, and develop the skills to train other CHWs in Maryland in the four specialty training curriculum topics. 

This is a blended learning program consisting of six (6) online learning modules and a two (2) day intensive in-person training. To attend the in-person training, participants should have completed the online sections of the TEACH curriculum. These trainings are open to any Community Health Worker in Maryland, especially those interested in or already working in the infectious disease and/or sexual health fields in the State of Maryland.

The first two in-person Train the Trainer trainings will be held on January 22-23 and January 24-25.

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day - Wednesday, February 7, 2024

February 7 is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NBHAAD), which was first observed in 1999. This observance is a day to acknowledge how HIV disproportionately affects Black people.

Black communities have made great progress in reducing HIV. Yet racism, discrimination, and mistrust in the health care system may affect whether Black people seek or receive HIV prevention services. These issues may also reduce the likelihood of engaging in HIV treatment and care. NBHAAD is an opportunity to increase HIV education, testing, community involvement, and treatment among Black communities.

This year’s theme is "Engage, Educate, Empower: Uniting to End HIV/AIDS in Black Communities".

• Engage: Discussing ways to better involve the Black community in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts. This can include outreach programs, community partnerships, and utilizing local leaders and influencers to promote HIV testing and destigmatize the conversation around HIV/AIDS.
• Educate: Focusing on improving HIV/AIDS education among Black youth and adults. This could cover the latest research, treatment options, understanding of PrEP and PEP medications, and debunking myths that contribute to stigma and discrimination.
• Empower: Highlighting success stories and strategies that have effectively empowered Black individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Empowerment can be through advocacy, policy change, access to care, and support systems.

Key Points: Featured Resources

Learning Objectives

At the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Describe HIV self-testing in Maryland.
• Identify benefits and limitations of HIV self-testing.
• Explain the importance of seeking confirmatory testing and counseling after receiving a reactive HIV self-test result.
• Discuss confidentiality and informed consent.

Please note that continuing education credits are not available for this module.

The open enrollment period for the Maryland AIDS Drug Assistance Program (MADAP) starts in January 2024. Brush up on key topics in preparation for open enrollment by reviewing the slide decks from the "MADAP Prime Time Round Table" webinar series, hosted by the MADAP team at the Maryland Department of Health.

Visit AliveMaryland.org/MADAP or click the button below to download slide decks from the seven webinars in this comprehensive series.

Maryland Priority Populations Data Dashboard

Trends in key HIV metrics for these populations can be viewed from 2017-2022. 

Using this dashboard, we can see that of the 416 HIV diagnoses among People with Male-to-Male-Sexual Contact exposure in 2022, 270 (64.9%) were among non-Hispanic Black People. Of those, 84.8 percent were linked to HIV medical care within one month of diagnosis.

Maryland HIV County Overview Data Dashboard

Using this dashboard, we can see that in Prince George’s County, 37.6 percent of new HIV diagnoses in 2022 were among people aged 25-34.

Traveling for HIV Care Data Dashboard