Friday, November 22, 2024
11/22/2024
Established in 1973, Whitman-Walker Health (WWH) is a Federally Qualified Health Care Center (FQHC) and Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. WWH offers primary medical and dental care; HIV/AIDS specialty care, mental health and addictions counseling and treatment; HIV education, prevention, and testing; support groups; legal services; and medical adherence case management. WWH has been a Ryan White Part C grantee since 1991 and remains committed to meeting the health needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities and people living with HIV. WWH will use capacity development funds for Infrastructure Development, specifically to continue expanding capabilities of the electronic medical record (EMR) to support telehealth as a much-needed response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic while developing an integrated HIV/Primary/Behavioral/Oral care pathway with expansion of care at WWH’s new health center opening in 2023. The proposed service area for this capacity building grant is the entire District of Columbia. WWH requests $150,000 for this one-year project. WWH serves 30% of people living with HIV in the District. WWH requests statutory preference, as HIV services in the DC area do not sufficiently address the need. HIV+ patients at WWH are predominantly Black. In describing gender, approximately three-quarters of WWH’s HIV+ patients are male and 8% identify as transgender or genderqueer/non-binary, with more than half reporting non-heterosexual identity. Thirty-three percent of all patients are covered by public insurance plans and 47% fall under 200% of the federal poverty level. WWH centers are well-situated, geographically, to provide services to underserved communities. Washington, DC has one of the highest rates of HIV transmission in the country and falls within the CDC’s definition of an epidemic. It is essential for community health centers to provide the highest quality and most innovative care possible as part of a coordinated response to the epidemic. As part of WWH’s efforts to reduce the impact of HIV and achieve the objectives of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, Population Health & Quality (PHQ) staff will expand and oversee clinical teams’ use of Relevant, a population health platform, as a complement to the health center’s eClinicalWorks (eCW) EMR platform. Using the sophisticated analytics provided by Relevant will improve patient engagement via telehealth, streamline care planning, and support implementation of targeted HIV interventions via telehealth modalities. Relevant will continue to allow for real-time dashboards and visualizations of WWH’s patient populations, segmented in meaningful ways that allow the staff to target tele-interventions based on risk and need. PHQ staff will use Relevant to monitor the creation of an integrated care pathway to support the health center’s expansion of care and leverage this pathway to incorporate long-acting injectable antiretroviral therapy (ART) into HIV primary care at WWH to increase viral suppression and annual retention in care. PHQ staff will also facilitate training and provide technical assistance for clinical staff to increase their use of standardized population health tools in Relevant for visit planning in the telehealth world. This capacity-building expansion of WWH’s EMR and companion analytics will support efforts toward achieving two of the three National HIV/AIDS Strategy goals: 1) Increase access to care and improve health outcomes for people living with HIV and 2) Reduce HIV-related health disparities.
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).
