Ryan White Title IV Women, Infants, Children, Youth and Affected Family Members AIDS Healthcare - The North Broward Hospital District dba Broward Health is requesting $1,451,304 annually to provide comprehensive, family-centered medical and specialty care for low-income women, infants, children, and youth (WICY) with HIV, and for affected individuals. The program will improve health outcomes through testing and linkage to care, retention in medical care, viral suppression, and will reduce new HIV infections in the community. Services will be provided in the Broward County service area which has one of the highest HIV/AIDS burdens in the United States. Broward Health is the healthcare safety-net provider for Broward County, an urban area with a population just over 2 million located on the southeast coast of Florida. Broward Health features four hospitals, the Children’s Diagnostic & Treatment Center, and 12 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) that provide primary and preventive care in medically underserved areas, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. Broward Health is the service area’s only Ryan White Part D provider. Broward County’s HIV burden is large, persistent, and requires a coordinated service delivery system to meet care needs. New HIV diagnoses among women in Broward County increased from 125 in CY2022 to 161 in CY2024, a jump of 28.8%. Among youth (13-24), new diagnoses increased from 74 in CY2023 to 84 in CY2024. Infants and children represent smaller numbers, but they are a complex population requiring intensive pediatric care management, robust caregiver support, and greater public health coordination. In CY2024, Broward Health served 710 WICY clients with HIV, including 575 women age 25 and older, 85 infants under age 2, 5 children ages 2–12, and 45 youth ages 13–24. Ninety clients were not documented as virally suppressed or were missing viral load documentation, an improvement from the previous year but still too high. Countywide, newly diagnosed WICY clients doubled from 12 in CY2022 to 24 in CY2024, and just 6 of 24 newly diagnosed WICY clients were documented as linked to care within 90 days. Broward Health’s Ryan White Part D program will address the need for linkage and retention strategies to maintain WICY clients in care. In Broward County, issues such as high housing costs, high uninsured rates, transportation challenges, food insecurity, and other economic factors are all barriers that interfere with WICY access to HIV care. For WICY clients, these pressures directly compete with the ability to keep appointments, maintain phone access, afford transportation, store medications safely, complete laboratory monitoring, and remain consistently engaged in HIV care. The WICY population needs an HIV care model that coordinates clinical care, case management, behavioral health, pharmacy access, laboratory monitoring, and support services. Broward Health’s Part D program provides these services and more through a comprehensive, family-centered model of care designed to improve access, retention, treatment adherence, and viral suppression among women, infants, children, youth, and affected family members. The program specifically focuses on reducing barriers that interfere with engagement in HIV care by integrating outpatient medical care, HIV testing and counseling, medical case management, nutrition services, specialty care, behavioral health support, treatment adherence services, and support services. Testing, linking patients to care, and ensuring patients are retained in care are the pillars of Broward Health’s HIV continuum of care. Broward Health has many decades of experience providing Ryan White health services to the community and has the expertise, infrastructure, and commitment necessary to deliver high-quality, comprehensive, client-centered care. Through longstanding partnerships and a proven track record of serving people with HIV, Broward Health remains dedicated to improving health outcomes and ensuring sustained access to essential Ryan White services.
