Telehealth Strategies to Maximize HIV Care

Yesterday at the 2022 National Ryan White Conference, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) HIV/AIDS Bureau announced that it selected JSI to lead an important new initiative to identify and maximize telehealth strategies to improve linkage to and retention in care and health outcomes for people who receive Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) services.

Our work will focus on:

• Identifying telehealth strategies that are best suited for different RWHAP populations.
• Increasing use of effective telehealth modalities and/or strategies within the RWHAP.
• Increasing dissemination of telehealth strategies and tools for uptake in the RWHAP.
• Increasing capacity of RWHAP recipients and subrecipients to identify and implement effective telehealth strategies.
• Increasing equity in HIV care for people who have not yet been maintained in care and populations that historically experience poor health outcomes.

The National HIV/AIDS Strategy identifies telehealth as a way to reach people experiencing risk of or living with HIV. Telehealth can mitigate many of the barriers to retention in HIV care. It also emphasizes the need to expand implementation research to adapt interventions to facilitate uptake in local environments and among priority populations. This is even more critical in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated rapid scale-up of telehealth modalities and strategies.

This work provides an important opportunity to collaborate with HRSA, RWHAP recipients and subrecipients, people with lived experience, and other key stakeholders to expand the evidence base and resources available to maximize the use of telehealth strategies for HIV care.

Learn more about our HIV and telehealth work.