A Peer Driven System of Healthcare Access for People Living with HIV/AIDS Information The Washington AIDS Partnership’s Positive Pathways is a new initiative in the District of Columbia that assists out-of-care HIV-positive African Americans living in Wards 5-8 to access HIV medical care, with a particular focus on women and their partners.
Positive Pathways has established a network of 12 trained peer Community Health Workers (CHWs) who are placed in community and primary care settings with the goal of identifying out-of-care HIV-positive individuals. CHWs focus on building peer-based trust and informing individuals about living with HIV, providing personalized assistance to help them enter and navigate service systems, and supporting them throughout the early part of their medical care until they become fully engaged. Peer CHWs utilize their unique position to address barriers to care that can present challenges for other medical professionals, such as providing trust-based information and education, overcoming denial and stigma, conducting outreach and support deep in the community, taking the time to walk clients through the healthcare system, and helping clients strategize to manage the logistics of caring for oneself in the context of a complicated life. Working in D.C. Communities with the Highest Need CHWs hired through the project are placed at community and primary care organizations throughout Wards 5-8, wards that have the highest HIV prevalence in D.C. Host sites include Family & Medical Counseling Service, Our Place D.C., United Medical Center, Unity Health Care, Whitman-Walker Health's Max Robinson Center, and the Women's Collective. CHWs focus their recruitment on African American women and their heterosexual partners within these wards. Continuing Education and Ongoing Training and Support Positive Pathways includes a significant education opportunity for its CHWs as all twelve have received a scholarship to participate in a new 8-month CHW training program at the Community College of D.C. The training program ends in December 2011. This is the first CHW course offered in Washington, D.C. CHWs will also benefit from ongoing training and education opportunities to help them succeed in their new positions. A Partnership for Success The Washington AIDS Partnership’s Positive Pathways initiative includes over 15 partners: CommonHealth ACTION's Institute for Public Health Innovation (works closely with the Washington AIDS Partnership to coordinate this project); CHW sites listed above; CMS Health Initiatives, Community College of D.C.; D.C. Department of Health’s HIV/AIDS Hepatitis, STD, and TB Administration; District of Columbia Primary Care Association; Mosaica; Providence Health Foundation – Capital Health Careers; the AIDS Education and Training Center “Local Performance Site” at Howard University, and others. The project is funded through the AIDS United Access to Care Initiative, supported by a grant from the Social Innovation Fund. Other funders include the Consumer Health Foundation, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States Inc., M∙A∙C AIDS Fund, and World Bank. |
