Hamilton HOPE

The Title III Ryan White HOPE Program aka HOPE Program, a partnership with US Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of HIV/AIDS, is one of only two such programs in Harrisburg that provides comprehensive HIV/AIDS SERVICES.

Hamilton Health Center’s HOPE Program located at the Fulton Street site is staffed by program director Regina King, HIV Specialist Dr. Arthur Williams, Christine Ludwick, Yubel Bacallao, Myra Duran, Nicole Hamilton, Lashaun Jones, Patricia Whitehead, and Traci Carter. Regina manages the HOPE Program but in her words, the entire staff plays leadership roles in developing HOPE Programs, promoting HIV testing, counseling, treatment, awareness and education in the Harrisburg area.

The HOPE Program was established in 2001. Initially, the number of patients being tested annually for HIV was only about one hundred. With aggressive outreach and dissemination of program information into the community, this number increased dramatically to eighty, and then to one hundred per month.

The HOPE Program encourages HIV testing and HIV treatment, performs intensive community outreach, provides speakers who describes the program’s services, and organizes a variety of events to educate people.

Every person who is sexually active should be tested. HOPE offers testing Mondays through Fridays, with or without appointments.  There are three different kinds of HIV tests.

Dauphin County has PA’s 4th highest rate of AIDS with 1200-1600 HIV cases African Americans are 18.1% of the County population, but 41% of its AIDS cases; Latinos are 4.1% of the population, and are 27% of its AIDS cases. Approximately, 600 individuals in our community with HIV are not receiving care. Hamilton’s Ryan White funded HOPE Program maintains the most diverse staff of all local HIV providers and includes a skilled African American HIV-specialist, the only minority physician providing HIV care in the Harrisburg region. HOPE provides HIV primary care services in an ambulatory care setting; support services that are especially important to our patients who often have multiple social problems, including poverty, social stigma, homelessness, substance abuse, persistent mental illness, and HIV-related depression; and is the only provider offering a team-based approach to HIV care to indigent patients in a community-based primary care setting. Free testing. Support services.

The Ryan White Department also offers the SPBP (Special Pharmaceutical Benefits Program) for qualified patients. One of the biggest advantages of Hope Program is that every person living with HIV has a right to choose health care provider whom she or he can trust, and be open and honest with about sensitive issues.

HHC offers targeted prevention education programs in Dauphin County, and support for these programs will enable a greater number of people to receive important health education, as well as information necessary to prevent the transmission of diseases, such as HIV/AIDS.