Ryan White Title III HIV Capacity Development and Planning Grants

Proposed Capacity Development Activity: People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) face an array of challenges and health disparities such as poverty, stigma, homelessness, and mental illness. Additionally, PLWHA often engage in risky behaviors such as illicit drug and alcohol abuse and unprotected sex which put themselves and others at risk for transmission and other health complications. Exchanging these risky choices for healthier behaviors, such as: modifying tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use; adopting consistent condom use; taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) as prescribed; and attending regular medical appointments, can prevent HIV transmission and improve health outcomes in PLWHA. Motivational Interviewing is an intervention strategy that is directive and patient centered and assists patients in exploring and resolving ambivalence in order to change unhealthy or problematic behaviors. The Bluegrass Care Clinic (BCC), a university-affiliated clinic which provides HIV services to over 1300 patients in central and eastern Kentucky, proposes to incorporate motivational interviewing into the patient-centered, multidisciplinary team model of care. The BCC will collaborate with Marla Corwin and Paul Cook of the Frontier AIDS Education and Training Center and the University of Colorado to train more than 40 staff members in Motivational Interviewing. This two day training and subsequent booster session will provide the BCC’s clinicians, case managers, and clinic staff with the skills necessary to incorporate Motivational Interviewing and other strengths-based strategies in order to help create a welcoming clinic environment, strengthen relationships between patients and their providers, and enhance patients’ ability to engage in/be retained in care and adherent to their HIV medications. HIV Care Continuum: The BCC proposes to train the entire program staff in Motivational Interviewing which will include: health educators, intake/patient service coordinators, medical case managers, physicians, nursing staff and remaining clinic staff. This comprehensive effort will ensure that staff serving patients along every point on the HIV Care Continuum will have additional tools to successfully link patients to care, retain patients in medical care, and ensure patient adherence to prescribed ART.