Over 10,000 individuals within the Detroit Metro area are diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, and many suffer from substance abuse problems.  A new WSU program aims to “expand and enhance” methods for treating these individuals.

Dr. Mark Greenwald, associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences in the School of Medicine at Wayne State, along with a collaborative team of clinical researchers from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences and the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine, have been awarded a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. The project, “Integrated Substance Use and Physical Health Intervention for Recovery (INSPIRE): A Substance Abuse Program for Minority Persons Living with HIV/AIDS,” will addres the complex needs of individuals experiencing co-occurring conditions of substance use or abuse and HIV or AIDS among a primarily African American and uninsured or underinsured population, according to Dr. Greenwald.

Coinciding numbers from the WSU and DMC HIV/AIDS Program, which currently serves over 1,700 persons, indicate that 79% are African American and most report incomes that are below the poverty line.

“This grant is significant because Psychiatry and the HIV Clinic already have a comparable Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grant to deliver mental health services to these patients,” Greenwald said. “With the addition of this grant, we have a tremendous opportunity to create a comprehensive behavioral health unit to evaluate and treat the complex physical, mental health and substance abuse problems of these patients.”

Over five years, the interdisciplinary team plans to screen a total of 1,160 individuals and provide assessment and motivational enhancement interventions to 575 of them.  These people will be filtered into targeted groups, which include: women; men who inject drugs; men who have sex with men; and individuals released from prisons and jails within the past two years.   These groups will be treated at different periods during the five-year program, with about 100 individuals to be provided medication-assisted treatment.

Dr. Greenwald will lead the team’s efforts toward: eliminating barriers to treatment; reducing the abuse and associated harms of illegal opioids and other drugs, and the misuse of prescription drugs; enhancing adherence to antiretroviral therapy to facilitate effective treatment of HIV/AIDS; and reducing or managing the debilimating interactions between physical health problems, psychiatric illness and substance use disorders.