PACT project history

1995 – Community activists from Roxbury’s Egleston Square neighborhood approach PIH to collaboratively train people from inner-city Boston to improve conditions in their communities, which suffer from some of the worst health indicators in the United States. The work begins by training community members (called Soldados de Salud or Soldiers of Health) to teach their friends and neighbors about health promotion and harm reduction.

1998 – Soldiers of Health receives funding from the Office of Minority Health to create the PACT Project, a program whose soldados specifically focus on HIV prevention among high risk youth and injection drug users as well as health promotion and adherence support among residents struggling with HIV/AIDS.

2001 – PACT separates from Soldados de Salud and becomes a key program under the newly founded Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. 

2002 – PACT receives funding from Partners Healthcare’s Center for AIDS Research to launch its DOT-Plus program, combining health promotion with directly observed therapy. PACT also received funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to begin Fuerza Latina (Latin Strength), a comprehensive HIV and substance use prevention initiative targeting Latino injection drug users.

2004 – PACT launches Youth for Prevention, Action and Change through Thought (YPACT) to empower at-risk Boston teens. PACT receives three years of funding from the Rx Foundation to expand its HIV health promotion program catchment area. 

2005 – PACT relocates to Codman Square, Dorchester, the heart of the community it serves. New referral networks are added to the HIV program.

2007 & 2008 – PACT expands its DOT-Plus patient quota with assistance from an NIH research grant.  A new team is formed to respond to the requests for assistance in replicating the model in other US locations, including NYC, Miami, and the Navajo Nation.

2009 – PACT launches new partnership with Codman Square Health Center to bring CHWs to their most at-risk diabetic population. Through a randomized control trial, the program shows promising results for the intervention group.

2010 – PACT collaborates with Commonwealth Care Alliance and Network Health, a Massachusetts Medicaid managed care organization, to provide wrap-around care to various at-risk groups receiving care in the Cambridge Health Alliance system. 

2011 – PACT receives continued support from the Rx Foundation to expand its training and technical assistance capacity. Collaboration with Brigham and Women’s advanced medical home project begins and focuses on developing the clinic’s capacity to understand the full context of the patient. PACT training staff also starts to work with Massachusetts General Hospital to integrate CHWs into their nurse-driven, care management program.