Telehealth Strategies to Maximize HIV Care

This notice announces the opportunity to apply for Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) HIV/AIDS Bureau (HAB) Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) funding for the Telehealth Strategies to Maximize HIV Care (HRSA-22-030) project. HRSA will fund one cooperative agreement for up to three years to identify and maximize the use of telehealth strategies that are most effective in improving linkage to care, retention in care, and health outcomes, including viral suppression, for people with HIV who receive services through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP).This project builds upon existing programs, and HAB will coordinate with similar activities in HRSA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

For the purposes of this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO), the following terms are used:

• Modalities are the technologies that are commonly associated with the term “telehealth.” These could include video conferencing, the internet, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, and land line and wireless communications.
• Strategies include activities or practices (intervention strategies) to improve outcomes for people with HIV via telehealth, as well as the methods or techniques (implementation strategies) that support optimal integration and uptake of these interventions in RWHAP settings.

·        Strategies chosen for this project will meet the criteria of an emerging intervention, as defined by Psihopaidas et al. (2020). These types of strategies address emerging priorities for improving the care and treatment of people with HIV. Emerging interventions have demonstrated real world validity and effectiveness but do not yet have sufficient published research evidence or evaluation to document their effectiveness.

The objectives of the Telehealth Strategies to Maximize HIV Care project are:

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

The award recipient will (1) research and select telehealth strategies that can be used to maximize HIV care in the RWHAP; (2) fund, coordinate, provide technical and capacity-building assistance, monitor, and evaluate implementation of telehealth strategies for a minimum of five RWHAP recipients and subrecipients (further referred to as subawardees); (3) create an inventory of project strategies and tools; (4) disseminate the project’s products through various outlets, ultimately for uptake and replication by RWHAP recipients and subrecipients; and (5) evaluate the project using an implementation science framework.