Exponents

Exponents began work with ARRIVE in 1988 a time when tens of thousands of drug addicts were becoming infected and dying from AIDS. There were tremendous fears both in the recently released parolees Exponents were working with and the larger communities they were returning to. It was a time when there were no treatments and finding out you were HIV... positive was akin to a death sentence. It was a time when many health care providers and drug programs refused to help addicts who were infected. ARRIVE was a pilot project of National Development and Research Institutes, funded as a demonstration project by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It was one of the first government efforts addressing HIV/AIDS among drug addicts in the country and one of the first programs of its kind. Located in a lower eastside church basement amongst the homeless and the hungry, the ARRIVE project began offering HIV and drug relapse prevention classes to injecting drug users who had recently been released from prison. Seven men attended the first series of ARRIVE classes and five successfully completed the program. Exponents's mission was to stop the spread of HIV and help those who were already living with it. EXPONENTS is a client-driven rather than program-driven. The individualized strategy responds to the changing personal needs of men and women with histories of substance abuse and incarceration regardless of their stage of addiction and recovery. Many are at risk for or have diagnoses of HIV, and Hepatitis C. EXPONENTS has assisted individuals in stabilizing their lives through health and wellness training; access to primary and mental health care and professional development programs for employment in health care and substance abuse fields. Exponents assist Exponents's clients in learning that their past life experiences have value and that they can draw on those experiences to direct their futures into purposeful lives.Read More