CRUSADA currently houses the following Center of Excellence:

• The Center for Substance Abuse and AIDS Research on Latinos in the United States (C-SALUD) funded by the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

To view the C-SALUD project website, click here.

To view C-SALUD's abstract on the CRISP (Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects) database, click here.

This Center is directed by Dr. Mario De La Rosa.

The activities of CRUSADA are organized around four different cores:

• 
  The Administrative Core manages the administration of the grant, provide leadership, facilitate collaboration among the Center Cores, and monitor and evaluate the Center‘s effectiveness and impact.
• The Research Core provides structural support for development and implementation of the Center’s research projects.
• The Training Core provides training on substance abuse and HIV/AIDS to FIU students, with a larger focus on Latinos, and to FIU faculty.
• The Community Outreach Core works in close collaboration with community agencies in Miami Dade County to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemics.

Since the origins of substance abuse and HIV/AIDS, the focus areas of CRUSADA, are multi-factorial, addressing them requires a coordinated and interdisciplinary approach at multiple levels (i.e., individual, household, peer, and community). Accordingly, the Center brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines, including social work, public health, nursing, criminal justice, health services administration, psychology, sociology/anthropology, and public administration at Florida International University.

The study population of the Center is minority populations of Latino descent—defined by shared elements of Latin American ancestry and culture. The geographical focus of the Center is Miami-Dade County in particular and Florida in general. Miami-Dade County is an excellent location for conducting research, training and community outreach activities on the link between HIV/AIDS and substance use among the Latino population. There are several reasons for this:

• The County is located in a metropolitan area that has the highest reported annual AIDS rate in the U.S., even ahead of New York Metropolitan area. Latinos comprise a large percentage of the HIV and AIDS cases in the County. Florida, in general, has been at the center of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States since the early 1980s.
• HIV exposure through Injection Drug Use (IDU) is increasing in Miami-Dade. The County is a gateway for drugs with one of the highest morbidity and mortality rates from cocaine use. It is also increasingly being impacted by marijuana use.
• Demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Miami-Dade exacerbate the HIV/AIDS and substance use epidemics. Miami-Dade County is the only county in the U.S. with immigrant majority, and these immigrants are almost exclusively Latinos. It accommodates the poorest large city in the U.S., the city of Miami. This indicates that the County’s residents (especially immigrants) have less ability to provide for basic services for their families, including health care services (BICUMP 2004).
• More than 60% of Miami-Dade’s population lives in medically underserved areas. They face significant economic, cultural or linguistic barriers to health care. Latinos constitute a majority of the medically underserved population in the County.

View more information on Miami-Dade County in general.
View more information on Miami-Dade County's substance use and HIV/AIDS problem.