ASIAN & PACIFIC ISLANDER WELLNESS CENTER
2008 ACCOMPLISHMENTS

With a one-stop-shopping approach to the health of our communities, A&PI Wellness Center responds to the gap in health care and community services for the underserved and often neglected LGBT and A&PI communities. We provide HIV care and prevention, transgender resources and support, and community development and capacity building for other A&PI organizations nationally. To meet the needs of our clients—often immigrants or refugees who do not speak English as a first language—A&PI Wellness Center staff speak many A&PI languages including Cantonese, Hawai­ian, Hindi, Ilokano, Japanese, Malay, Mandarin, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Visayan.

Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center is proud of our many accomplishments this year, achieved despite City and Federal funding cuts to HIV services and a declining economy that has affected our clients and donors.

HIV Care Services include case management, free on-site primary medical and psychiatric care, mental health and substance abuse counseling, treatment advocacy and support groups. 

• 190 clients, primarily new A&PI immigrants, received HIV services and case management through our offices in San Francisco, Oakland and San Mateo Counties
• 60 high-need, uninsured clients received primary medical care on-site (at our medical clinic, in collaboration with Tom Waddell Health Center)
• 2,200 client visits with doctors at our medical clinic were logged
• 768 client visits with nurses at our medical clinic were also logged
• At 18 events hosted by our Living Well Network, an average of 35 clients engaged in social support and group education, providing peer building for A&PIs living with HIV
  

HIV/STD Prevention Services reach youth (straight, queer and questioning), gay and bisexual men and transgender persons through community organizing and outreach, work­shops and support groups, peer counseling and prevention case management.

• 1,932 individuals responded to outreach online, at street fairs, clubs and bars
• 1,543 of those individuals subsequently attended a group at our agency
• 6,080 condom and lube packets were distributed
• 1,500 clean needles were also distributed
• Outreach events included SF LGBT Pride, Folsom Street Fair, Castro Street Fair, Aloha Festival, Vietnamese Tet (New Year’s) Festival, Fiesta Filipinas, Cherry Blossom Street Fair, Nihonmachi Street Fair, Pistahan, GAPA Runway, and Thai New Year
• Outreach activities were also conducted at bars and clubs, such as Jet, Adonis, Crib, Underworld, Club Dragon, Fresh, N’Touch, Shangri-La, Lime and the Transfer

• 782 individuals were tested for HIV
• 29 tested positive and were transitioned into our Care Services where they received medical care, case management, treatment advocacy, or referrals
• 314 individuals were screened for Hepatitis B & C
• 12 tested positive for Hep B and 2 for Hep C. These individuals were linked to medical care at Chinatown Public Health Center, Chinese Hospital or San Francisco General
  

Transgender Services at TRANS: THRIVE (Transgender Resource and Neighborhood Space: Transgender Health & Resource Initiative for Vital Empowerment) include educational workshops, support groups, case management, social events and HIV testing and counseling.

• 3,527 individuals responded to outreach or accessed the drop-in center
• 1,804 of those individuals attended group sessions covering topics such as hormone therapy, self-defense, and job counseling or accessed peer counseling and other drop-in services like showers, computers and clothes
• 439 case management sessions were provided to clients on-site and in jail, as well as a monthly support group that helped clients enroll in treatment programs, connecting them to services providing an important lifeline. For clients in jail, our services delivered options at a critical moment when they were open to making significant changes in their lives
  

Community Development & External Affairs

Capacity Building Assistance

• We now assist 12 other A&PI organizations throughout the United States and its Pacific Territories, enabling them to better serve their communities and enrich their HIV prevention programs

• 288 HIV and HIV-related service providers were trained in our multi-tiered certi­fication programs, with 100% of participants reporting that CSTEP added to their knowledge and/or skills

FLARE Project (Fostering Leadership for Asians & Pacific Islanders through Research & Evaluation)

• 5 community needs assessments were completed in the Filipino, Vietnamese, South Asian, Burmese and Pacific Islander communities in three San Francisco Bay Area counties
• FLARE facilitated the creation of the Santa Clara County Collaborative, which is cur­rently implementing an expanded ethnicity data project, collec­ting disaggregated ethnicity HIV testing data among all commu­nities of color

Social Marketing

• 4 new public service announcements (PSAs) were produced by the Banyan Tree Project, our national HIV/AIDS anti-stigma campaign
• 1 PSA was the first to focus on A&PI transgender women
• We launched TalkAIDS, a national anti-stigma campaign targeting young people in Chinese communities to address the issue of silence about sex and HIV/AIDS, which produced a PSA with award-winning actress, director and producer Joan Chen

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