Project Encuentro: A Community-Based Participatory Research-Informed Harm Reduction Behavioral Intervention for People Who Use Drugs on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Julia Lechuga, PhD
Professor
Division of Prevention Sciences
Department of Medicine
UCSF School of Medicine

With a new White House administration taking power in January, many are concerned about new federal policies that may be implemented along the U.S.-Mexico border including their potential impact on persons who use drugs (PWUD).   Along the almost 2,000 miles that divide the two nations, the twin cities of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas make up the second largest international point of entry from Latin America into the U.S.  Please join us this month for a timely presentation by Dr. Julia Lechuga about her work on Project Encuentro, a NIHM-funded U01 grant to implement a community-based, behavioral HIV risk reduction program for PWUD on the border in El Paso and Juárez, Mexico.  Come to hear and discuss the design of the intervention, the theories and frameworks that inform the intervention, the results of an effectiveness evaluation, and their implications for the future.

Julia Lechuga (she/hers) is a Latina health psychologist native to the US-Mexico border.  She develops and implements harm reduction behavior change community-based interventions for people with substance use disorder.  Dr. Lechuga received her doctorate degree in Health Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso and completed her post doctorate at the Center for AIDS Intervention Research (CAIR) at the Medical College of Wisconsin.  During her post doctorate, she worked as part of an interdisciplinary team, developing and testing behavior change interventions to promote sexual and reproductive health and reduce infectious disease risk in Latinx populations with substance use disorder.  Between 2018-2021, she was a visiting professor fellow at UCSF, where she acquired expertise in innovative methodologies to optimize bio behavioral interventions to promote linkage into care among people who inject drugs living with HIV.

The UCSF Drug Use Research Group (DURG) is a city-wide seminar attended by faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and other Bay Area investigators centering on persons who use drugs.  Started in 2005 after a friendly debate between an epidemiologist and anthropologist on the merits of quantitative versus qualitative research methods, the DURG monthly seminars provide a community platform for new and established investigators to present their work, explore research questions and methods, and to prepare for grant applications and the dissemination of findings in a supportive environment.  The seminar has been successful in cultivating new collaborations and mentorship and in sustaining an interdisciplinary and interprofessional dialogue between those engaged in basic sciences, epidemiology, clinical, and public health research.  

We have returned to in-person meetings.  Our meetings are not recorded.  Please contact us if you’d like to present your work or research ideas for friendly consultation and peer review.