Through a three-year cooperative agreement with the Secretary’s Minority AIDS Initiative Fund and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) HIV/AIDS Bureau (HAB), Division of Community HIV/AIDS Programs (DCHAP), the initiative titled Improving Access to Care: Using Community Health Workers to Improve Linkage and Retention in HIV Care, seeks to increase the utilization of community health workers to strengthen the health care workforce and to improve access to health care and health outcomes for racial and ethnic minority people living with HIV (PLWH).

1

Improve access to healthcare and health outcomes for people living with HIV through the use of Community Health Workers (CHW)

2

Assist Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program-funded (RWHAP) medical provider sites with training and technical support for integrating CHWs into HIV multidisciplinary care team

3

Develop tools, materials and resources to support the use of CHWs in health care teams

As the Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center (TAEC) for the initiative, Boston University (BU) will provide training and technical assistance to these provider sites, especially CHWs and supervisors, as they develop and implement the CHW model in their settings. BU will also evaluate the effectiveness of the CHW model in improving linkage and retention in care, collect data on select clinical outcomes, and assess the programs implemented by the provider sites.

This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant number U69HA30462 “Improving Access to Care: Using Community Health Workers to Improve Linkage and Retention in HIV Care” ($2,000,000 of federal funding). This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.