The Rural Health Service Providers Network (RHSPN) will be co-convening a National Day of Advocacy on Monday, December 14th, 2020 from 2:00 - 4:00 PM Eastern.

The November 2020 meeting of the WVSSC will take place on Monday, November 9th, 2020 from 2:00 - 4:00 PM This month's meeting features the following guests: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Dr. Neeraj "Jim" GandotraChief Medical Officer(SAMHSA) Dr. Jean BennettSAMHSA Regional AdministratorRegion III Substance Use Disorder Stephanie LancasterDirector of Community Health SolutionsIndiana, […]

The Community Education Group has launched a new West Virginia Statewide Resource Guide that helps people in the state access resources for HIV, Substance Use Disorder (SUD), and Viral Hepatitis services.

The Community Education Group has begun distribution of 2,000 COVID-19 Relief Kits in West Virginia through 18 distribution partners.

The West Virginia Statewide Stakeholder Coalition (WVSSC) will be holding its second monthly meeting on Tuesday, October 13th from 2:00 - 4:00 PM.

https://form.jotform.com/202586193014048

The next meeting of the WVSSC will be held on October 13, 2020 at 2:00 PM Eastern. Those interested may join the WVSSC by filling out the form at the following address: https://form.jotform.com/202586193014048

This week's #PeopleWorthKnowing interview features Monique Tula, Executive Director of the Harm Reduction Coalition.

This event is free and open to the public, particularly those involved in clinical care and HIV and AIDS research.

Register Below:

https://redcap.wvctsi.org/redcap/surveys/?s=TRW7NMJJJL

#CEGInWV has partnered with 18 organizations across West Virginia to distribute 2,000 COVID-19 Relief Packages.

#CEGInWV is asking providers, Community-Based Organizations, and individuals about the OTP Moratorium.

Thank you, to everyone who attended this first meeting, and we look forward to working with our partners across West Virginia to build a stronger community, one project at a time.

Join #CEGInWV on our first West Virginia Statewide Stakeholder Meeting on Tuesday, September 1st, 2020 at 12:00 PM Eastern.

#CEGInWV will be convening a statewide stakeholder meeting on Tuesday, September 1st, 2020, @ 12:00 PM for West Virginia advocates, organizations, providers, and state officials.

Cardea, Community Education Group, and TruEvolution are partnering to learn how COVID-19 is impacting Rural Health Services Providers (RHSPs) so they can better facilitate conversations with policymakers and advocate to expand access to resources to support client care.

http://surveys.cardeaservices.org/s3/RHSP-COVID

This week's #PeopleWorthKnowing interview features Dr. Alan E. Greenberg, Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at George Washington University, and Director at the District of Columbia Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR).

The second Color Matters webinar – Incarceration - Beyond These Walls – will premiere on August 19th, 2020, at 6:00 PM Eastern

Round One of distribution will begin in mid- to late-September.

We managed to secure an unprecedented 15 distribution partners, and have had to triple our initial order.

Thank you, to our partners.

CEG has launched a statewide survey for providers and People Who Use/Inject Drugs focusing on West Virginia's 2007 legislative moratorium on opening any new Opioid Treatment Programs in the state.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=FcqY6rFM1EaUFIC49lyuMw0IDkH9U1VEk7rZu13nya9UNkU3MEdYOUpNWDhIOEVZSjk2WlJTOEFYVC4u

This week's #PeopleWorthKnowing interview features Diana Feliz Oliva, Senior Manager in Public Affairs at Gilead Sciences.

Guest Blog By: Dr. Matt Cox

We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, with a respiratory virus wreaking havoc on the American population and its economy. The human toll continues to grow in many communities, cities, and states; deaths and hospitalizations are up, to say nothing of the impacts of social isolation, quarantines, and the recession.

This week's #PeopleWorthKnowing interview features Dr. Stephen Lee, Executive Director of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD).

I’ve been thinking about science versus politics, especially since clashes between the White House and Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are in the news so much these days.

By: Amanda G. S. Morgan

The opioid epidemic has become a large part of the lives of most Appalachians. If we haven't been affected directly by it, then we know someone who has been.

But now, with COVID-19, the opioid epidemic is poised to become an even bigger issue.

The first Color Matters webinar – Law Enforcement Interactions – will premiere on July 22, 2020, at 6:00 PM Eastern.

Register Here:
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07eh6yk4rl55420139&llr=qigy9s4ab

Join CEG's A. Toni Young on Thursday, July 23rd, 2020, @ 3:00 PM Eastern, as she hosts and moderates CEG's second webinar of the summer, Where Do We Go.

Register Here:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYod-2hqTojHdbKo--Hn9foRgr2hSFIfcCA

This week's #PeopleWorthKnowing interview features Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association (APHA).

When looking at rural and suburban areas where opioid (and occasionally meth) addiction is high, there are certain factors that tend to coalesce to create an environment ripe for the growth of addiction: lower incomes, higher rates of unemployment, areas where industries have left, lower levels of educational attainment, less access to economic resources, and areas where industries that require hard labor are the drivers of the economy.

Those factors essentially are Appalachia.

#CEGLive hosted its first livestream on Tuesday, June 30th, 2020, and while it was not without its technical difficulties, we eventually ended up with a fantastic panel discussion.

This week's #PeopleWorthKnowing interview features CEG's own Ty Williams.

Live Tonight @ 6:00 PM EST: https://youtu.be/fQSZIKGPWZA

Join Host, Ty Williams as he moderates CEG's first ever YouTube Live event:

Learning Our Roots: A Journey Through Black Transmasculinity

Guest Blog By: Alphonso David

When black people and our allies take to the streets tonight in protest—as we have on previous nights past and as we will on nights to come—we will be calling for justice. Justice for our community means justice for George Floyd. Justice for our community means justice for Breonna Taylor. And justice for our community means justice for Brianna “BB” Hill, because when we declare Black Lives Matter, we also mean Black Trans Lives Matter.

By: Ty Williams

“Tony McDade could have been me,” is all I keep thinking.

So, I've been thinking...

I've been thinking that systemic change is not going to be easy.

I was talking to a friend of mine, the other day - and my mentor - and he asked if I could've imagined this, six months ago. And, I frankly said, "No."

This week's #PeopleWorthKnowing interview features Tori Cooper, Founder and Executive Director of Advocates for Better Care Atlanta (ABCA)

Guest Blog By: Katrina Harmon

As the African proverb so wisely states, ‘It takes a village.’ In my role as Executive Director of the WV Child Care Association (WVCCA), I’ve repeatedly witnessed the truth in this statement as I represent a village of providers serving West Virginia’s foster care youth.

This week's #PeopleWorthKnowing interview feature's Katrina Harmon, Executive Director of the West Virginia Child Care Association (WVCCA).

By: Marcus J. Hopkins

Once COVID-19 really hits rural America – particularly the geographically isolated Appalachian Mountain region (I know…I keep hammering this description home) – rural America is not ready to respond. We do not have in place the kind of rural public health infrastructure that is necessary to effectively respond to an outbreak in rural regions.

For the inaugural entry in our new video series, #PeopleWorthKnowing, we decided to feature Gabriel Maldonado, Founder and CEO at TruEvolution, Inc.

I’ve been thinking about the impact of COVID-19 on communities, on networks of people, on families and individuals. In addition to its direct toll on the health of older and medically vulnerable people, on the economy, and on people’s day-to-day lives, this pandemic has also highlighted a number of social ills. Essentially, it has aggravated […]

By: A. Toni Young

I’d like to welcome readers to the first entry in CEG’s new blog, Community Perspectives. This post will serve as a brief introduction to the purpose of this blog, and a brief explanation of why I think it’s so important to hear from people we might not otherwise encounter.

Community Education Group is now able to accept donations through both its new website donation portal, and ongoing contributions through AmazonSmile.

CEG’s new video series, People Worth Knowing, will launch on May 20th, 2020. People Worth Knowing will feature three-to-five-minute interviews with people from West Virginia, across the nation, and around the world with a wide variety of backgrounds, lived experiences, and fields of work, including users unions, Rural Health Service Providers, child services, trans health, […]

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD) announced the launch of a free, on-demand training for entry-level COVID-19 contact tracers. The course, Making Contact: A Training for COVID-19 Contact Tracers, will support ongoing public health agency efforts to prepare new contact tracers for their work of […]

The purpose of this study is to learn how the novel coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19) has impacted your life. Full information about this study is available in the informed consent document below. At the end of the survey, you will be asked if you would like to be entered into a raffle […]

NOTE: Only residents of the following states are eligible to participate:Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas (From our friends at Black South Rising) Black South Rising is a collective of advocates working in the South to raise the visibility of Black HIV movement leaders in the region. We recognize […]

Community Education Group will be launching its new blog, Community Perspectives, on May 18th, 2020. Community Perspectives will focus on the issues that impact the work CEG does in West Virginia, nationally, and globally, and will feature weekly articles by CEG’s staff, including Founder & Executive Director, A. Toni Young, West Virginia Policy Coordinator, Marcus […]

May is Hepatitis Awareness Month and CEG is participating by raising awareness of how the opioid and meth addiction crises in West Virginia intersect with the state’s grim record for having the highest rates of new Hepatitis B (HBV) and Hepatitis C (HCV) diagnoses in the United States. In 2017, West Virginia reported the highest […]

Any time there’s a public health crisis, healthcare officials are faced with the challenge of how best to communicate messages to the public. With that in mind, CEG has sourced two articles focusing on how to communicate public health messages both on social media and in rural settings—areas where CEG is working tirelessly to communicate […]

COVID-19 has raised myriad questionsacross the healthcare landscape, butespecially in the HIV community. Forpeople living with HIV, each new virusrepresents an unknown set of variables,each of which must be considered byboth patients and providers. The International AIDS Society has puttogether this helpful primer on HIV andCOVID-19 which answers many of thesequestions. Check it out at […]

As the Coronavirus (COVID-19) forces society to engage in preventative measures such as social distancing, #CEGInWV has created a Best Practices poster for use by Harm Reduction Programs offering services to People Who Use Drugs during this pandemic. In this time of uncertainty, it is imperative that those operating HRPs do everything in their power […]

So, I’ve been thinking about how none of us can truly avoid the impact of COVID-19. Either we know someone who’s been impacted by it, or we have been impacted by it ourselves, or maybe we are now working from home, even reconfiguring our whole organizations and the way we do our work. Everybody is […]

On behalf of TruEvolution (Riverside, CA) and the Community Education Group (Shepherdstown, West Virginia), I am writing to invite your organization to join a coalition of rural-serving Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), rural health organizations, and Federally-Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in asking the House and Senate to include in the forthcoming COVID-19-related stimulus bill specifically appropriated funding […]

Things are a bit shinier around CEGthese days. As you may have noticed,our website has been relaunched withmore than just a new coat of paint; we’vegot a whole new design rolling out today. Thanks to our partners at Fors Marsh Group, for their excellent work on giving our website a much-needed facelift! Please take a […]

At his recent abstract presentation delivered at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), Dr. R. Paul McClung presented a portrait of a successful HIV intervention in Cabell County, West Virginia. By his estimation, the response to what was then the third HIV outbreak in that state, beginning in January 2018, was a fine […]

So, I’ve been thinking about sharing. In particular I’ve been thinking that, as CEG starts this journey of working with health departments and Community-Based Organizations across the state of West Virginia, trying to integrate HIV into medically- assisted treatment programs, that our goal— and my goal, even my reason for being on the planet, frankly—must […]

CEG has launched its first digital media campaign as part of its HEPConnectgrant work. This series of ads will be running in West Virginia newspaper outlets in Cabell, Jefferson, Kanawha, Monongalia, Morgan, and Raleigh Counties. The ad run schedule is as follows:March/April 2020 – Cabell/KanawhaApril/May 2020 – MorganMay/June/July 2020 – JeffersonJune/July 2020 – RaleighJuly/August 2020 […]

From March 10th to March 13th, CEG's Executive Director, A. Toni Young, and WV Policy Coordinator, Marcus J. Hopkins, attended the first HEPConnect Grantee Convening of 2020 in Raleigh, NC. This event, hosted by the Harm Reduction Coalition and Gilead Sciences, brought together HEPConnect grant recipients and partner organizations from Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Community Education Group Receives $500,000 Grant to Bolster Fight Against HIV in West Virginia Sherpherdstown, WV (March 9, 2020) – Local West Virginia organization, Community Education Group (CEG), has been awarded $500,000 dollars in funding by Gilead Sciences to combat the spread of HIV in West Virginia. This new grant will support […]

So, I’ve been thinking about how the HIV landscape, and the HIV movement, have changed a lot and are still changing rapidly—and how Community Education Group has changed rapidly, too, over the last few years. Many of you will notice that we haven’t put out a newsletter in several years, and that we no longer […]

CEG will be launching a new weekly blog in 2020 focusing on some of the main issues facing healthcare consumers in West Virginia and other rural states, including the opioid epidemic, growing infection rates of Viral Hepatitis and HIV, and the state of healthcare infrastructure in the parts of America largely left behind or ignored […]

#CEGInWV is building a database of West Virginia-based community members, advocates, healthcare providers, government officials, business owners, and allies to help us build a statewide coalition. Join us in our effort to expand HIV, Viral Hepatitis, and Opioid Use Disorder education, prevention, testing, and treatment throughout West Virginia.

So, I’ve been thinking about the work that we do in social justice movements and in areas like HIV and reproductive health. It’s not easy work. It’s work that requires a lot of stamina, and it’s often very emotional work. For instance,right now Community Education Group is focused on three distinct areas: • Working to […]

Gilead Sciences has awarded Community Education Group $500,000 over two years to conduct HIV-specific work in West Virginia. This grant will enable CEG to build a statewide coalition to integrate HIV, Viral Hepatitis, and Opioid Epidemic prevention policies and activities, and address the drivers of, and responses to, all three interrelated epidemics. This is an […]

CEG’s founder and executive director, Toni Young, was featured in a piece published in The New York Times Opinion section: “H.I.V. Is Coming to Rural America And rural America is not ready” by Dr. Steven W. Thrasher (Northwestern University), speaking about West Virginia and rural America’s burgeoning HIV crisis lurking beneath the bucolic scenery: As […]

A. Toni Young was recently featured in the Slate podcast, What’s Next, in their episode, “HIV’s Threat to Rural America,” alongside Dr. Steven W. Thrasher. Follow the link to listen to the episode: HIV’s Threat to Rural America

In 2019, CEG opened a new regional office in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, to begin the arduous task of attacking, from a policy perspective, the myriad health crises faced by West Virginians. These crises include: the fourth HIV outbreak in four years, the highest rate of Hepatitis C in the U.S., the highest rate of […]

CEG is advising the University of Kentucky in developing a peer-based community engagement strategy for promoting HIV/HCV testing, replicating CEG’s Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Prevention Services (CHAMPS) model statewide in Kentucky. CEG originally pioneered CHAMPS in Washington, DC, recruiting and training community health workers including ex-offenders, people living with HIV/AIDS, and individuals with histories of substance […]

As part of the lead-up to the 2019 International AIDS Society (IAS) conference in Mexico City, CEG collaborated with local NGO partners Casa de la Sal and Clínica Especializada Condesa, as well as Mexico’s Centro de Investigación en Enfermedades Infecciosas (CIENI) and the Washington DC-based Martin Delany Collaboratory (MDC) BELIEVE program, to present a two-day […]

Responding to CDC reports about a spike in Hepatitis C infections across numerous West Virginia counties, and thanks to a grant from the Harm Reduction Coalition’s HEPConnect Initiative, CEG is currently working in collaboration with the Exchange Union to expand harm reduction services in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle. West Virginia leads the U.S. in opioid […]