Thursday, December 26, 2024
12/26/2024
The Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Sexual Health Clinic proposes to strengthen and expand sexual health services through community engagement, with a focus on improving care for people from sexual and gender and racial and/or ethnic minority groups who are disproportionately burdened by sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV. Our proposed service area is centered in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, an area comprising the urban center of the Boston metropolitan area. Residents of Suffolk County – particularly men who have sex with men (MSM) and Black and Hispanic or Latino/a people – face high burdens of HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. At the same time, Suffolk County contains few STI or sexual health clinics. There is thus a substantial unmet need for accessible, inclusive, stigma-free sexual health services within our area. The MGH Sexual Health Clinic is well poised to address these gaps. With nearly 9,000 patient visits in 2022, the clinic provides STI testing and treatment, medications for HIV prevention (e.g., pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP), and sexual health vaccines, including the mpox vaccine. The clinic provides a core set of services at no cost to patients. In addition, the clinic has a strong record of responding to public health priorities. Most recently, in response to the mpox outbreak, the clinic was one of the first four sites in Massachusetts to offer mpox vaccination, administering more than 5,000 vaccines to date. The MGH Sexual Health Clinic has also partnered with community organizations to increase access to services for people at highest likelihood for STIs and HIV. These include clinic sessions at a health center serving a large immigrant population; two community centers serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ+) young people; and an immigrant services organization. These community partnerships have successfully reached people at higher likelihood for STIs and HIV. However, to further address STIs and HIV and reduce health disparities, we propose forming a new collaboration with a community organization serving Black and Hispanic or Latino/a LGBTQ+ people. With this partnership, we plan to co-host STI testing and vaccination clinics at community events. In addition, we will hire a nurse practitioner to increase clinical capacity with community partners and an Outreach Coordinator to facilitate connections with community groups, raising awareness of and increasing access to our services. Through this project, we will offer additional STI services, including emergency contraception, cervical cancer screening, and rapid HIV testing. Rapid HIV testing will lay the foundation for a pilot project in which we provide same-day access to long-acting injectable PrEP. Long-acting injectable PrEP is superior to oral PrEP at preventing HIV and may be preferable for some patients. However, the process of starting long-acting injectable PrEP often takes multiple visits, which may be a barrier for some patients. By providing long-acting injectable PrEP in a same-day fashion, we will increase access to this promising intervention. By seeking authentic and equitable community engagement and by enhancing the sexual health services we offer with ongoing input from community members, we anticipate that this project will lead to crucial outcomes that will ultimately improve health equity. Key outcomes include increased community involvement in clinic-level planning, increased engagement with public health partners, increased clinic capacity, increased identification and treatment of STIs, and increased opportunities for engagement in HIV prevention. With this project, we aim to reverse longstanding trends and health disparities in STIs and HIV that disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ and Black and Hispanic or Latino/a people.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).