(Tampa, FL - July 1, 2005) Dr. Michael Knox, founder and director of the USF Center for HIV Education and Research, announced today that the center has been awarded a highly competitive, five year grant to provide HIV/AIDS training to healthcare providers in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, a region that ranks among the top ten states/territories affected by HIV. Awarded by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the grant is the largest in the Center's history, and will allow for continuation and further development of its Florida/Caribbean AIDS Education and Training Center (AETC).

“Almost 5 million people become newly infected with HIV each year,” said Dr. Knox, “and more than 90,000 people are currently known to be living with HIV/AIDS in the region of Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”

“Yet, despite evidence of a serious crisis,” added Knox, "there is a critical lack of qualified health care providers who can respond to this epidemic. Since the first AIDS cases were identified, knowledge of the disease and its treatment has increased exponentially. The new funding will allow the Center to offer the very latest in AIDS education, training, and consultation so that front-line healthcare providers can give their patients the best care possible.”

AETCs are federally mandated to “train health personnel in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of HIV disease.” In order to meet this mandate, the Florida/Caribbean AETC will offer expert clinical consultation on all aspects of managing patient care, intensive clinical preceptorships and mini-residencies, workshops and seminars, publications, hands-on supervised clinical experience, and technical assistance on HIV clinical issues.

The AETC will also provide education to many health professionals whose specialty is not HIV, but who include among their patients people living with HIV. Many of these providers practice in areas where there are no HIV specialty doctors, and the majority of their patients are from minority and other underserved populations.

“Florida/Caribbean AETC training will reach out to such providers in order to increase their capacity for treating HIV positive patients, which continues to be critical in response to the domestic HIV epidemic,” stated Dr. Knox. A network of training partners, including the University of Puerto Rico, the University of Florida, the University of Miami, Florida A&M University, and the University of the Virgin Islands, will provide faculty and clinical training sites throughout Florida and the Caribbean .

“These are premier institutions and we are pleased to have brought them all together in this effort,” added Knox. “The new grant monies will be used to leverage these vast resources and accomplish three primary goals: to improve the quality of care provided to HIV-infected persons, to increase the number of health care providers capable of diagnosing and treating HIV, to disseminate up-to-date prevention and treatment information to health care providers.”

“We find ourselves dealing with a constantly changing epidemic,” said Knox, “and a constantly changing response is needed so that we can help to ensure that patients receiving specialized care from trained practitioners will live longer.”