Testing a Novel Data-to-Suppression (D2S) Intervention Strategy in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program

Summary

The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) for low-income people with HIV (PWH) is a key resource for reducing HIV health disparities and scaling up evidence-based interventions. As RWHAP serves \>50% of US PWH, RWHAP outcomes are vital to achieving "getting-to-zero"/ Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) Plan targets.

As a grantee for RWHAP Part A (RWPA) funding distributed to the counties/cities severely affected by HIV, New York City (NYC) conducts regular HIV care continuum monitoring citywide and in its RWPA programs, which offer support services to reduce social and behavioral barriers to care/treatment. Local data consistently show lower viral suppression (VS) among RWPA clients in HIV care than among non-RWPA PWH in HIV care. Relative to NYC HIV cases overall, NYC RWPA clients (\~14,000 per year) over-represent Black and Latinx PWH and high-poverty neighborhoods. To address local outcome disparities and to fill gaps left by data-to-care strategies and research focused on medical care (re-)linkage, the investigators propose to implement and rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of a novel 'data-to-suppression' (D2S) intervention among RWPA behavioral health and housing program clients who are in HIV care but unsuppressed. Surveillance-based reports on unsuppressed clients plus D2S capacity-building assistance will guide RWPA providers in targeting and delivering evidence-informed strategies to improve VS.

Conditions

• Hiv

Interventions

OTHER

Data to Suppression (D2S)

Intervention components include (1) reporting and (2) capacity building to facilitate identification of and follow-up with PWH who are in care but virally unsuppressed. The NYC Health Department will send client-level, surveillance-based reports on individual clients' viral suppression status to the current Ryan White Part A behavioral health and housing service providers for those clients. The Health Department will also provide capacity building and technical assistance (TA) support to service providers on following up with clients flagged as unsuppressed, and on addressing barriers to viral suppression through root cause analyses and the development and implementation of D2S quality improvement projects. The intervention components are all delivered to Ryan White Part A providers by the Health Department, in order to enhance program resources to achieve and maintain viral suppression in the Ryan White Part A client population in NYC.

OTHER

Usual practice

The NYC Health Department's usual practice with Ryan White Part A behavioral health and housing service providers includes sharing an annual aggregate surveillance-based report on viral suppression prevalence at each site and across all Part A sites (with trends for the past three years and breakdowns of viral suppression for specific populations in the latest year), a guidance document delivered with the aggregate viral suppression report, annual site visits to monitor program delivery, and on-demand quality improvement project guidance (for whatever Part A quality improvement project each site may identify and select).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

  collaborator NIH

• City University of New York

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Denis Nash, PhD · CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy

• Mary K Irvine, DrPH · New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

SEQUENTIAL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-12-15

Primary Completion

2024-06-01

Completion

2026-04-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations