Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program Building Care and Prevention Capacity: Addressing the HIV Care Continuum in Southern Metropolitan Areas

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This announcement solicits applications for fiscal year (FY) 2016 to support a single organization that will serve as the Coordination and Technical Assistance Center (CTAC) for a new Secretary’s Minority AIDS Initiative Fund (SMAIF) program entitled Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) Building Care and Prevention Capacity: Addressing the HIV Care Continuum in Southern Metropolitan Areas.  The purpose of this program is to implement innovative models of service delivery that result in improvements in RWHAP Part A jurisdictions’ HIV care continuum for minority populations.   The CTAC will provide technical assistance (TA) and service delivery funding to one subrecipient in each of four different RWHAP Part A jurisdictions located in the Southern U.S.  In order to broaden the impact, no more than two subrecipients shall be from Part A jurisdictions in a single state.  The goal of the project is increasing capacity to serve minority populations with a focus on men who have sex with men (MSM), youth, cisgender and transgender women, and people who inject drugs (PWID), resulting in improved health outcomes along the HIV care continuum.  The four subrecipients must be selected from the 18 RWHAP Part A jurisdictions located in the following states: Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.  Please note that a subrecipient under this cooperative agreement does not have to be a current RWHAP provider.  The project period is up to three (3) years.  For more information and a list of RWHAP Part A jurisdictions, please visit http://hab.hrsa.gov/abouthab/parta.html. Applicants must have a minimum four year history of developing and disseminating TA to RWHAP recipients and subrecipient providers, and are expected to collaborate with these partners in the development of this project. In collaboration with HRSA’s HAB, the CTAC will: Provide start-up and ongoing TA (onsite and virtual) to subrecipients located in four of the 18 RWHAP Part A jurisdictions in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia on a wide range of programmatic activities that have potential to positively impact the HIV care continuum in each jurisdiction by reducing disparities among minority populations. Provide subawards to expand evidence-based/informed interventions, within a jurisdiction. Provide ongoing consultation on the use of subaward funds to help with start-up of new programming. Provide TA to increase the identification of newly diagnosed individuals and access points for entry into HIV care and prevention services among newly screened, newly identified and previously identified but out-of-care minority people living with HIV (PLWH). In coordination with HRSA’s HAB, collaborate with the HRSA Office of Regional Operations and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on any regional activities, through virtual and face-to-face meetings to provide opportunities for learning collaborative discussions. The CTAC will also collate and share information on a wide range of effective (evidence –based or informed) programmatic interventions.  This will include interventions that emanate from the HRSA HAB Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) dissemination efforts, the CDC Effective Interventions Compendium, other efforts such as the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC) guidelines, interventions published in the peer-reviewed literature, and the recently concluded SMAIF-funded Care and Prevention in the United States (CAPUS) projects, many of which occurred in southern States.  It is also recommended that interventions considered include a “test and link” model (described in the methodology section), where individuals would move directly and almost immediately from their HIV test result to specific treatment or prevention interventions in a community or health setting.  Overall, this project could thus include a number of potential domains for use of subawards in programmatic implementation such as: Increasing HIV testing and linkage to care Increased testing and linkage to care for HIV/Hepatitis C virus (HCV) co-infection Increasing HIV treatment coverage Increasing retention in care and antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence and HCV curative treatment Increasing viral suppression Tailored approaches to certain minority populations of focus [MSM, youth, cisgender and transgender women, PWID]

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