About Us

VA HIV/AIDS Care

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is the largest single provider of medical care to people with HIV in the United States. The VA's efforts in this area are led by the office of Clinical Public Health Programs, under the direction of the Public Health Strategic Health Care Group (PHSHG) whose mission is to provide the highest quality, comprehensive care to veterans and to have that care recognized as the standard by which all health care in the United States is measured. This includes patient care activities, clinician and patient education, prevention activities, and research directed at continuous improvement of medical and preventive services and delivery of care to veterans.

The HIV/AIDS efforts, carried out by VA medical facilities across the country, take a comprehensive approach that includes:

• Screening for risk of HIV infection
• Testing for those at risk
• Education for patients and their families
• Giving providers access to the best available information about HIV
• Excellence in clinical care
• Support for research to improve clinical care
• Ongoing quality improvement

Programs and Contacts

Public Health Strategic Health Care Group
Janet Durfee, RN, MSN, APRN, Acting Chief Consultant

Office of Clinical Public Health Programs
David Ross, MD, PhD, Director

• Hepatitis C
  
• HIV/AIDS
  

Center for Quality Management in Public Health
Larry A. Mole, PharmD, Director
The mission of the Center for Quality Management (CQM) is to catalyze continual innovation and improvement in VA clinical care via the use of quality management techniques and the strategic use of clinical information systems.

Website Editors

The VA HIV/AIDS website is a collaboration between PHSHG and the Center for HIV Information (CHI), a program of the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. CHI partners with government agencies, foundations, and international organizations to identify and develop information on HIV care, prevention, and policy. This website leverages the expertise of CHI to offer provider education and training, clinician tools, and educational materials for patients. CHI's Advisory Board is chaired by Paul A. Volberding, MD, Chief of Medical Service, San Francisco VA Medical Center, and Professor and Vicechair, Department of Medicine, UCSF.

Medical Editors

David Ross, MD, PhD
Director, Office of Clinical Public Health Programs

CHI medical editors who provide content to the VA HIV/AIDS website are:

• Susa Coffey, MD
  Susa Coffey is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and is an attending physician in the Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco's largest Ryan White Care Act-funded HIV specialty clinic. Dr. Coffey was the founding coordinator of the Men of Color HIV/AIDS clinical program at UCSF, funded by the Office of Minority Health.
• Oliver Bacon, MD
  Dr. Oliver Bacon, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF Medical Center, cares for patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) at the UCSF Positive Health Practice. Bacon's clinical interests include general internal medicine, infectious disease, and HIV. In addition to caring for patients, he is pursuing research on the detection of early HIV infection in San Francisco and Brazil, on ways to incorporate HIV prevention into medical care, and on the use of Web-based clinical vignettes to evaluate training needs of HIV providers in resource-limited settings. Bacon also is a clinical instructor at UCSF.
• Ian McNicholl, PharmD, BCPS (Added Qualifications-Infectious Diseases)
  Ian McNicholl is a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist with the UCSF Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at UCSF. Dr. McNicholl is a board-certified pharmacotherapy specialist and has added qualifications in infectious diseases pharmacotherapy. Dr. McNicholl is responsible for providing expert review and commentary on HIV/AIDS antiretroviral drug interactions.

Contact this Site

For questions or feedback related to the VA's HIV/AIDS programs, please contact: publichealth@va.gov. Note: Emails sent to this address are not secure. Please do not include personal data. To send a secure email, use VA's Ask a Question - IRIS.