Highlights
UCSD researchers have spent years building trust in communities of unhoused people who use drugs in San Diego and across the border in Tijuana.
Since spring, some 10% of their research participants have been found to have active syphilis — cases that might otherwise have gone undiagnosed and untreated.
NIH restrictions on foreign research collaborations have complicated the team’s infectious disease monitoring, and a shortage of intramuscular penicillin makes full treatment for these patients less certain.
SAN DIEGO — She first came to Park Boulevard for the money and the snacks. A friend told her there was a place they could go with free fruit gummies, granola bars, and rice crispy treats — and she could make $20 if she answered some survey questions. It sounded like a dream. GB had been spending her nights crinkling through garbage bags for bottles and cans. Aluminum got $1.66 per pound; to make $20, she had to collect hundreds of empties. As far as she understood, on Park Boulevard, all she had to do was show up. One morning in May, she and her friend walked over from the tent city where they lived.
