The New England HIV Education Consortium

The New England HIV Education Consortium (NEHEC) is a HRSA Minority AIDS Initiative (MAI) Special Capacity Building funded program serving all six states in New England. The primary goal of NEHEC is to address the HIV-related training, educational, and support needs of the full, spectrum of providers as they provide state-of-the-art, quality and compassionate care to individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Innovative training formats address the needs of minority providers, providers serving racial/ethnic/linguistic minorities and communities of color, and those working in settings funded by the Ryan White CARE Act.

Clinical providers of color and clinical providers serving people of color living with HIV are our primary audiences. NEHEC is a collaborative project, featuring a consortium of community-based AIDS-service organizations, multicultural training agencies, community health centers, and peer-led agencies. Across the region these agencies are known as our local performance sites. NEHEC activities include several levels of training opportunities, information dissemination, and support, in a variety of formats.We target providers with different levels of experience and expertise. We provide capacity building opportunities in different geographic and workplace settings. NEHEC employs these activities as a vehicle to build the capacity of providers, agencies and systems to serve HIV+ people of color, and underserved populations, across the region. We aim to have our efforts assist in the elimination of ethnic and racial HIV/AIDS health disparities in our region.

Capacity Building, technical assistance and training sessions also target a secondary provider audience. This includes a wide range of providers including case managers; peer counselors; prison providers and discharge planners; substance abuse providers; social workers; treatment educators; other mental health professionals; adherence specialists; client advocates; and community health workers-outreach workers. Capacity building and educational programs are available to: community health centers, correctional facilities, substance abuse treatment centers, immigrant/migrant health centers, mental health agencies, maternal/child health clinics, hospitals, AIDS service organizations, regional AHEC sites, housing programs, organizations serving racial/ethnic/linguistic minorities, and other community-based agencies and Ryan White-affiliates, in urban, suburban, and rural settings.