The Chicago Adolescent HIV Network (CAHN) is a primary care and referral network led by the Cook County HIV Primary Care Center, its Women and Children HIV Program, its Division of Adolescent Medicine and our off-site clinics. Its members include: Chicago Osteopathic Hospital, The University of Chicago Wyler Children's Hospital, Rush Presbyterian St Lukes Medical Center and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. CAHN's distinguishing features include: I. A long-established, culturally-appropriate, high volume multi-racial, inter-disciplinary, primary care adolescent medicine program with respected teaching and research components. 2. A comprehensive, multi-racial HIV/AIDS program with pediatric, family, and adult primary care, providing social support services for patients of all ages, sexes and orientations. The program will provide effective transitioning and continuity of care as adolescents merge into the adult HIV care system. 3. A regionalized care system with complete Ryan White Care Act funded services as well as state, local and private resources supporting: primary medical care; mental health; benefit and entitlement coordination; housing, nutrition, home care, hospice and bereavement support; on-site child-care, support groups, pastoral care, legal assistance and chemical dependency programs. 4. A regionalized HIV primary care system with a distinguished research and publication record and with complete participation in federally-funded multi-institutional trials, observational data bases and multi- institutional consortia. 5. A consortium which includes four of the five largest medical schools in Chicago, providing regional leadership for the Title 1, Title II and Title III Consortia and whose referral networks include at least 90% of the HIV+ adolescents in care in Chicago. 6. An intra- and inter-institutional adolescent medicine HIV network which has been engaged in coordination of HIV primary care, research, teaching, education and community support since 1990. 7. An intra- and inter-institutional system which has included active, substantive patient and community involvement with structural, administrative and logistical issues for more than a decade. 8. A patient population which includes a primarily African-American segment, with a Hispanic contingent evenly divided among Mexican and Puerto Rican ethnicities. The Network will recruit 24 HIV+ and l5HIV- adolescents who meet protocol inclusion criteria. We will recruit, retain, and care for these patients using an inter-disciplinary model. HIV+ subject will be drawn from CCHIVPCC, Osteopathic and the University of Chicago. Negative subjects will be matched for age, race, sex and location. We expect to retain 80% of HIV+ patients by the end of Year I and 65% of HIV- patients.
