PREVENTION THROUGH EDUCATION: A BINATIONAL COLLABORATIVE PREVENTION TRAINING PROGRAM IN HIV/AIDS IN THE NORTHWEST MÉXICO-USA BORDER

Education is the most effective tool in the prevention of infectious diseases. A three years TIES project: Cross Border HIV/AIDS Prevention Training Program in the Northwest Mexican Border, was implemented in partnership among four Higher Education Institutions: the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), San Diego State University (SDSU) both from USA and Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) and Colegio de La Frontera Norte (COLEF) from México. The overall objectives of this partnership were: 1) To develop infrastructure to train personnel in the four partner institutions on HIV/AIDS prevention; 2) train at least 200 professionals in HIV/AIDS prevention, ranging from community based workers to physicians working in tertiary care centers in the northwest Mexican border region; 3) Implement distance learning components to ensure sustainability and widen the geographical reach of the HIV/AIDS Prevention Diplomado., 4) To create a curriculum for undergraduate medical students and also for postgraduate students concerning HIV/AIDS prevention at different levels of educational efforts. Our training project was funded by USAID and HED.
The overall outcomes for the three years of the project were successful due to the strong commitment to improve the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Northwestern Mexican border and surrounding regions by the four partnering universities through Education. Constant communication and updates between the coordinator and director to the participating universities helped in sustaining the partnership. Through the use of low-cost Internet technology (i.e. Skype for teleconferences and videoconferences) on-going communication between partners was successfully maintained, and barriers were successfully overcome. The partners from the Mexican universities received training by TIES faculty on the use of inexpensive telecommunications technology to ensure sustainability for future communications between the US and Mexican Higher Education Institutions after the end of our TIES project funding.

A surprising outcome of this project was the increase of participants each year for all the training events. Students and health professionals from Mexico expressed interest in the program and remained part of the program all three years. Many organizations associated themselves with Project TIES’s Cross Border HIV/AIDS Prevention Training Program in the Northwest Mexican Border Project and made it a known entity in the HIV/AIDS community.