HIV Prevention in Children

Our team of specialists has extensive experience in treating maternal, pediatric, and adolescent HIV and AIDS. Your child will receive top-quality care and our multidisciplinary team will develop a personalized treatment plan that addresses the needs of your child and your family. The program has an on-site laboratory certified in various HIV tests, allowing us to obtain tests faster than any other institution in the Chicago area. Our Special Infectious Diseases (SID) Program has become one of the top-rated maternal-pediatric HIV/AIDS programs in the country.

Our healthcare team coordinates various special activities for patients and families throughout the year, including caregiver education sessions, family fun days, special events for teens, a mentorship program matching patients with medical students and a quarterly newsletter to share information with parents. Through our Community Advisory Board, parents, caregivers and others from the community meet regularly to learn about the Lurie Children’s SID Program, review new advances in HIV science, give input on programmatic and study designs, and engage with community members to share lived experiences with HIV.

We also offer an HIV Prevention Education Program. We are committed to eliminating HIV transmission from mother to child and ending the HIV epidemic in women, infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.

A number of HIV prevention and treatment options are available for children, adolescents, and young adults living with HIV that prolong and greatly improve the quality of their lives. There are now multiple different classes of anti-HIV medications available, including one pill once daily regimens and long-acting injections which we offer at Lurie Children’s SID Program.

Our program's multidisciplinary healthcare team, led by Jennifer Jao, MD, MPH, includes Sahera Dirajlal-Fargo, DO; William J. Muller, MD, PhD; and Ayelet Rosenthal, MD, MS. The team also includes advanced nurse practitioners in Family Medicine and Pediatrics, a social worker, a child life specialist, a developmental specialist, a special phlebotomist, and outreach coordinator. 

An important part of HIV and AIDS prevention is understanding how HIV can be transmitted and taking steps to prevent transmission. We encourage prevention education and offer outreach programs to inform our community of prevention methods. Learn more about HIV prevention, transmission and testing:

The HIV/AIDS Program at Lurie Children's is Chicago’s leader in providing patients with the opportunity to enroll in pediatric or adolescent HIV/AIDS clinical research studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Clinical trials are studies to develop, produce and evaluate the effectiveness of new treatments and therapies for diseases. Our program offers patients access to the latest medication and treatment available. This research will continue to:

Currently, the program has more than 185 patients enrolled in government-sponsored clinical trials. It is one of the top rated pediatric HIV research sites in the country. Learn more about the hospital’s clinical trials related to HIV/AIDS.

In addition, the HIV/AIDS Program participates in numerous pharmaceutical companies' clinical research studies that strive to improve medication alternatives for HIV patients. These studies allow our patients access to cutting-edge research and medications that are designed to improve their quality of life until effective vaccines and a cure are found.

Current research at Lurie Children's involves:

• Working with immune modulators that focus on boosting the body's immune response
• Investigating the response to routine vaccination in patients with HIV to achieve a better response
• Designing potent and easily managed treatment regimens to decrease the rate of opportunistic infections
• Changing the factors involved in transmission of HIV between mother and infant (vertical transmission of HIV)
• Modulating treatment regimens and diet to facilitate normal cognitive (mental) and physiological (body weight and size) growth

We've collected a set of resources for people looking for help with HIV or general information.

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