Field Placement: Los Angeles County Department of Health Services -- Office of AIDS Programs and Policy (OAPP)
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Preceptors: Ernesto Hinojos (Director), Nancy Cayasso-McIntosh (Health Educator), and Victor Odicio (Health Educator)
Student Name: Vi Nguyen
Year: 2002

In July 2002, the XIV International AIDS Conference took place in Barcelona, Spain, where it was announced that there were an estimated 40 million adults and children living with HIV/AIDS globally. In the United States, an estimated 40,000 new cases occur every year. Within Los Angeles County, 27,645 people have died from AIDS and 16,663 people are currently living with AIDS.

These startling statistics are the reasons why I chose to do my summer internship at the Office of AIDS Programs and Policy (OAPP), a program of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. OAPP's mission is "to develop an effective response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Los Angeles County by improving our response to HIV disease and its associated risk factors, preventing its spread, maximizing health and social outcomes and coordinating impactful and efficiently targeted services for those at risk for, living with or affected by HIV." OAPP is organized into nine divisions but I conducted my field studies within the Educational Services division under the direct supervision of Ernesto Hinojos (Director), Nancy Cayasso-McIntosh (Health Educator), and Victor Odicio (Health Educator).

One of my projects for the summer was to co-facilitate the Basic Facts on AIDS training. The Basic Facts on AIDS course is offered to Los Angeles County employees, providing them with basic information about HIV/AIDS that they can disseminate to their friends and family. In addition to giving accurate knowledge of prevention methods, it provides participants with some insight into the legal, ethical, and psychosocial issues involved. After familiarizing myself with the training procedures, materials presented, and teaching modules, I had the opportunity to be integrated into the activities. I greeted participants, passed out the information packets, informed participants about the pre-test that they were supposed to take at the beginning of the training, set up materials for activities, graded pre- and post-tests, and led certain modules. This project initiated me as a health educator and developed my teaching and public speaking skills.

My second project was to assist in the development of the HIV Prevention Case Management (PCM) training curriculum. As a hybrid of traditional case management and HIV risk-reduction counseling, PCM is a special type of intervention designed to help at-risk individuals adopt and maintain HIV risk-reduction behaviors.

In addition, PCM strives to effectively respond to clients' medical, psychological, and social needs by linking clients to the appropriate service agencies. OAPP's goal is to be able to offer a PCM training by the end of the year 2002. As an intern, I helped to develop the PCM handbook, a document which contains all of the information that prevention case managers will be required to know for HIV PCM certification. I also helped to revamp the PCM intake and assessment form, a document which helps prevention case managers thoroughly assess a client's HIV, STD, and substance abuse risks, as well as their medical and psychosocial needs. In addition, I had the opportunity to attend a number of OAPP trainings, became certified as an HIV prevention counselor, and went on field trips with other County interns to other Department of Health Services' facilities. With all this said, would I recommend my field studies experience to other students? While this was certainly a worthwhile learning experience, any student considering working for the County should be prepared to deal with bureaucracy, paperwork, boredom, and frustration with anything administrative.

Back to CHS Field Studies Placement Index | Back to CHS Field Studies | Back to Field Studies Home