The HIV Office for Psychology Education (HOPE) Program endeavors to enhance psychologists' ability to competently and compassionately respond to people infected and affected by HIV.
Using a train-the-trainer model, the HOPE Program has trained and certified more than 450 Regional HOPE Program Volunteer Trainers to deliver interactive workshops for mental health providers in their geographic area. These trainers have in turn provided HOPE curriculum training in their communities to more than 27,000 mental health professionals since 1991.
Types of Training
HOPE Regional Trainers design their workshops, based on APA-approved curricula, to reach a diverse group of participants including: psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, educators, administrators, doctors, graduate students, and lay people.
Trainings are custom-tailored for a variety of settings including: military; school-based programs; community meetings; graduate courses; hospital in-services; and professional conferences.
HIV mental health service delivery training
The 10 modules in this training include:
- HIV Virology, Clinical Course, Medical Treatment, Epidemiology, and HIV Testing
- Integrating Primary and Mental Health HIV/AIDS Care
- HIV Mental Health Assessment Issues and Strategies
- HIV Mental Health Intervention Strategies
- Prevention Issues for HIV/AIDS Mental Health Providers
- Psychosocial Issues and Interventions for HIV-Affected Families
- Work in the Lives of People Living with HIV Disease: Roles for Psychologists
- HIV, Mental Health, and Prisons
- Club Drug Use, Abuse, and HIV/AIDS
- Transgender and HIV/AIDS
Each stand-alone module is designed to include a series of brief, topic-specific didactic lectures combined with slide sets. Interactive skills-building exercises and facilitated discussion topics and questions provide a training that is responsive to the needs of an individual site, group, or academic institution.
Multi-Disciplinary Mental Health Services Curricula on Ethical Issues & HIV/AIDS
The systematic decision-making process on which the curricula are based offers several advantages over less structured methods of analysis. Because it requires clinicians to analyze cases from a variety of perspectives while carefully documenting each step of analysis, it serves to reduce impulsive judgments that frequently occur when therapists feel pressured to act quickly because they are worried about the possibility of HIV transmission or law suits. It also helps to sharpen thinking and clarify the clinical issues at hand because it requires one to perform separate, sequenced analyses.
There are three versions of the Ethical Issus Curricula: Half-Day; Two-Hour; and 60/90 Minute versions. Overall objectives for the curricula include:
- Learn a model for ethical decision-making
- Learn how to analyze complex HIV cases in terms of five foundational ethical principles in conjunction with professional ethics codes
- See how the ethical decision making model applies to a case study (60/90 Minute and Two-Hour versions)
- Apply the ethical decision making model to an HIV mental health case study (Half-Day version)
The Ethical Issues & HIV/AIDS Curricula can only be trained by a HOPE Program Regional Trainer and is not available online. For more information regarding the curricula and to locate a Trainer, please contact HOPE staff.
The HOPE Program is funded by a five-year contract (No. 280-04-0121) with the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The American Psychological Association (APA) Office on AIDS administers the HOPE Program’s network of regional HIV/AIDS Trainers.
More About HOPE
The primary goals of the HOPE Program are to:
Improve HIV treatment and prevention services by educating psychologists and other mental health practitioners about effective and ethical ways to deliver mental health services to people with HIV/AIDS;
Increase the number of psychologists who work with persons living with HIV/AIDS and the number of psychologists who have specialized expertise in training mental health providers about delivering mental health services to people living with HIV/AIDS; and
Improve HIV-related education for psychology students in graduate programs, professional schools, and internship programs.
To meet these goals, the APA HOPE Program is conducting the following activities:
Deliver HIV-related mental health training to more than 1,000 psychologists and other mental health providers through local and regional HOPE Program trainings per year;
Provide technical assistance to HOPE Program Regional Trainers involved with developing and implementing HIV/AIDS workshops in their area;
Develop new curricula that incorporate state-of-the-science knowledge associated with mental health care for persons living with and affected by HIV/AIDS;
Conduct a National Training Conference (NTC) for new and veteran HOPE Program Regional Trainers; and
Train faculty of grantees funded under the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) HIV/AIDS Mental Health Care Provider Education in HIV/AIDS Program to deliver revised versions of a previously created HOPE Program curriculum entitled Multi-Disciplinary Mental Health Services Curricula on Ethical Issues & HIV/AIDS.
How We Select and Train Our Regional Trainers
The HOPE Program recruits doctoral level psychologists to become Regional Trainers once per contract period through announcements in APA Division and other professional newsletters, and direct mailings to targeted national organizations.
Individuals who wish to become HOPE Regional Trainers submit an application form, curriculum vitae, and a letter describing their HIV-related practice, teaching or training, and research experience.
A committee of reviewers chooses applicants based on experience, location or area served, and the individual's desire and perceived ability to reach out to his or her community. Consideration is given to applicants who reflect the diversity of those communities being hit the hardest by the HIV epidemic in the United States.
Those selected must commit to train at least 30 mental health professionals in their localities.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer HOPE Program Regional Trainer, please contact us. You will be sent an application during the next recruitment cycle. Should the HOPE Program receive a new contract from CMHS, the next recruitment cycle will take place in Spring 2010.
How to Locate a Trainer in Your Area
HOPE Regional Trainers are located in 41 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and British Columbia. Staff will assist you to identify the most appropriate Trainer for your training needs.
More about sponsoring a Training in Your Area
Email: HOPE Staff
The National Training Conference (NTC)
The most recent National Training Conference (NTC) took place in January 2006. Newly recruited and veteran HOPE Trainers took part in this process-driven experience designed to strengthen their training development, delivery, and community networking skills. State-of-the-science plenary sessions offered insight into the changing professional environment and disease trends coupled with their implications for clinical practice, . The sessions updated and supplemented HOPE Trainers' already extensive HIV knowledge and experience base. The team-centered NTC experience reinforces the HOPE National Training Network team building concept and enables trainers to interact with and draw from the experience of their expert colleagues from diverse backgrounds across the country.
During the conference, HOPE faculty review the HOPE training modules with newly recruited Trainers, supervise teach-backs, and spend a large part of the conference demonstrating, discussing, and developing program planning, training, and community outreach skills. This focus provides trainers a basis for more comfortable and successful training and outreach when they return to their communities.
At the completion of the NTC, HOPE Regional Trainers are equipped with the information, skills, training materials, (HOPE Training Package), and the support of their colleagues and HOPE Staff in order to provide state-of-the-science HIV-related continuing education to mental health professionals in their communities.
Traditionally, HOPE conducts one NTC per contract period. If awarded a contract in 2009, the next HOPE NTC will take place in 2011.
Contact the HOPE Program
David P. DeVito
HOPE Program Training Director
Email: HOPE Staff
Telephone: 202-216-7603
Write: American Psychological Association
Office on AIDS HOPE Program
750 First Street, NE
Washington, DC. 20002-4242
