Florida Man Has "A Commitment to Serve" Haitian Community

Born in Haiti, Laud Jean-Jacques now works with central Florida's Haitian community to prevent HIV in a personal, culturally relevant style. In Orlando, he is the project supervisor for a CDC-funded pilot program using social networks to refer people at high risk for HIV for counseling, testing, and if infected, treatment. When CDC approached the Center for Multicultural Wellness and Prevention's director, Dr. Marie François, about the social network project, she knew Jean-Jacques was right for the job, she said.

Jean-Jacques and his team train those with HIV to go into the community and encourage their partners, friends, and family members to get tested or, if they are already infected, to access health care. The program is being tested in seven US cities and appears to be working, reports CDC. Usually, outreach activities such as health fairs find one person in 200 who are HIV-infected. The peer-recruitment program finds 16 times that number, CDC says.

The program was expected to end in September, but CDC is searching for funding to continue it.

"When we received this funding, Laud organized everything," said François. "He's gone above and beyond what was expected of him." Though Jean-Jacques would like to go back to Haiti someday, "since he cannot do that right now, he likes to feel that he is contributing to the Haitian community here in some way," said his wife, France Jean-Jacques.

Back to other news for August 17, 2005