Supporting Re Engagement In Hiv Treatment Services

This policy brief provides an overview of the complexities and challenges of people re-engaging in HIV treatment services. It highlights person-centred interventions that address the reasons for disengagement, the importance of providing support at re-engagement tailored to individual needs and country examples of tracing and re-engagement interventions. The brief summarizes WHO guidance and emphasizes the importance of implementing relevant recommendations to support adherence, continuous engagement, tracing and sustained re-engagement. This brief aims to assist health policy-makers, health ministries, practitioners, implementers and communities to improve understanding of the various challenges and solutions for re-engaging individuals to support better health outcomes. It provides guidance on supporting people living with HIV to sustain re-engagement without further interruptions in treatment and care. The goal is to reduce HIV-related morbidity and mortality, prevent new infections and the risk of drug resistance.

These guidelines provide new and updated recommendations and good practice statements in the following areas: starting ART, including initiating treatment outside the clinic and support for same-day ART start; frequency of clinical visits and ART refills; measuring adherence; tracing and re-engagement in care for all populations; psychosocial support for adolescents living with HIV; task sharing for diagnostic services; and service integration. This guideline seeks to provide support to Member States, programme managers, health workers and other stakeholders seeking to achieve national and international goals to end the HIV epidemic as a public health threat by 2030. WHO is currently in the process of collating all HIV normative guidance developed since 2016 in order to publish the third edition of the consolidated HIV guidelines in July 2021. This updated version will include the new service delivery guidance presented here.

Infectious diseases are the leading cause of death globally, particularly among children and young adults. The spread of new pathogens and the threat of antimicrobial resistance pose particular challenges in combating these diseases. Major Infectious Diseases identifies feasible, cost-effective packages of interventions and strategies across delivery platforms to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, malaria, adult febrile illness, viral hepatitis, and neglected tropical diseases. The volume emphasizes the need to effectively address emerging antimicrobial resistance, strengthen health systems, and increase access to care. The attainable goals are to reduce incidence, develop innovative approaches, and optimize existing tools in resource-constrained settings.

he starting point for this guideline is the point at which a woman has learnt that she is living with HIV and it therefore covers key issues for providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights-related services and support for women living with HIV. As women living with HIV face unique challenges and human rights violations related to their sexuality and reproduction within their families and communities as well as from the health-care institutions where they seek care particular emphasis is placed on the creation of an enabling environment to support more effective health interventions and better health outcomes. This guideline is meant to help countries to more effectively and efficiently plan develop and monitor programmes and services that promote gender equality and human rights and hence are more acceptable and appropriate for women living with HIV taking into account the national and local epidemiological context. It discusses implementation issues that health interventions and service delivery must address to achieve gender equality and support human rights.

OBJECTIVE: This study explored the acceptability and feasibility of adopting and implementing religious determinants, including prayer and referral to religious leaders, into engagement in HIV care [EIHC] for African American people living with HIV [PLWH]. METHODS: Data for this study were collected through semi-structured individual interviews with African American PLWH, four focus groups with church leaders/members, and two focus groups with healthcare providers who serve African American PLWH. Demographic information was collected from participants including gender, sexual orientation, relationship status, age, race, and religiosity (and when appropriate, number of years associated with the church, anti-retroviral medication adherence, and doctor’s appointment visits). Individual interview and focus group questions focused on potential reach, adoption, and implementation of religiously-tailored EIHC support services in churches and health settings. Interview and focus groups were transcribed by a professional transcriptionist. Codebook themes related to Reach, Adoption, and Implementation of religiously-tailored engagement in HIV care support services were developed and finalized through an iterative process. Transcripts were coded by two researchers, resulting in good to almost perfect interrater reliability. This was an exploratory study without preconceived hypotheses due to the limited research conducted in this area. RESULTS: The sample included 20 PLWH, 40 church leaders/members, and 18 healthcare providers. Findings from interviews and focus groups indicated religiously-tailored EIHC support services would be highly beneficial for African American PLWH. Religiously tailored support services were considered highly adoptable/implementable among PLWH, church leaders/members, and health providers. Several implementation strategies were suggested to increase reach, adoption, and implementation of religiously-tailored EIHC support services. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing collaboration between religious and health organizations may enhance EIHC for African American PLWH. Through joint church/health initiatives, religiously-tailored EIHC support services may increase reach of PLWH who are not engaged/not adequately engaged in HIV care. Collaboration may also increase support service discretion and increase health provider outreach within community-based settings. Additionally, PLWH may be referred to churches who are accepting of PLWH, which may increase social support and enhance quality of life.

Learn the latest social service interventions to promote HIV medication adherence Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) can significantly improve the health outcomes of people living with HIV. Still, benefits rely on the steady adherence to the medication regimen as prescribed. Social Work and HIV: Challenges to Treatment Adherence is a practice-friendly resource with the latest HIV medication client adherence strategies and guidelines. This valuable book provides the tools for assessment of client adherence, and includes approaches and helpful guidelines to develop specialized counseling, social services, and provider training programs. Treatment plans for HIV can be complicated and client adherence can hinge on several diverse factors. Social Work and HIV: Challenges to Treatment Adherence explains in detail how professionals can help individuals with HIV to stick to the prescribed medication plan. This book focuses on the daunting psychosocial, spiritual, and biomedical challenges that social workers, social service professionals, and healthcare providers often encounter and provides strategies to effectively address these issues. Innovations in adherence counseling and provider training programs are explored. Practitioners will learn psychosocial interventions that are empirically based, with predictors of adherence closely examined on how they may vary by gender, socioeconomic, and ethnocultural diversity. Co-occurring health and behavioral conditions, such as substance use, are considered in detail. Chapters are extensively referenced and several have tables and figures to clearly present data. Topics in Social Work and HIV: Challenges to Treatment Adherence include: key themes within current treatment adherence research from the 2006 NIMH/IAPAC International Conference on HIV Treatment Adherence reviews of studies of psychosocial predictors of HAART among HIV positive clients research on the impact of support from partners, family, and health care providers has on medication adherence factors that predict medication adherence among HIV positive adults research on the differential effects of social and religious support and background variables on treatment adherence interventions to improve HAART adherence in methadone clinics specialized adherence counselors and their impact on adherence training to increase counselor knowledge of HIV medications, adherence strategies, and improved counseling skills studies on the prevalence of continued drug use and everyday adherence decision making Social Work and HIV: Challenges to Treatment Adherence is a valuable resource for social workers; substance abuse counselors; social service and other health care providers; researchers; educators; and policy advocates. The book is also a relevant supplemental text for graduate courses in counseling; multi-systems interventions; community health; social development practice; research methods; and program evaluation as offered through departments of social work, public health, nursing, health psychology, community medicine, and interdisciplinary health professional training programs.

These Good Participatory Practice guidelines aim to provide systematic guidance on the roles and responsibilities of entities funding and conducting biomedical HIV prevention trials towards participants and their communities. Such entities include investigators, research staff, pharmaceutical industry sponsors, foundations, government-supported research networks, non-governmental research sponsors, and all others involved in designing, financing, and executing clinical trials research.

It is no exaggeration to say that motivational interviewing (MI) has transformed the culture of clinical practice and the way healthcare practitioners and researchers understand behavior change. MI, as an empirically supported therapeutic approach, has grown all across prevention, intervention, treatment, and research settings. Nowhere is the need to target behavior change more urgent than in people living with HIV. MI is a collaborative, person-centered clinical method that fosters a constructive practitioner-patient relationship and facilitates behavior change through eliciting and strengthening motivation for change. MI can be implemented as a stand-alone brief intervention, a prelude to treatment, or a platform for ongoing care. While MI has been shown to promote behavior change in a variety of healthcare settings and health behaviors in diverse cultures and communities, from substance use, safer sex, physical activity, medication and treatment adherence, more recently there has been an explosion of research that tailors MI to HIV care. This original and compassionate book, Motivational Interviewing in HIV Care, brings together researchers and healthcare practitioners who have considerably contributed to the science and clinical practice of MI in HIV care. It provides current, accessible review of the current status of the MI interventions, their clinical applications, and the evidence that supports them. Motivational Interviewing in HIV Care is essential reading for workers in the field of HIV, who will benefit from up-to-date research reviews and practical applications of MI across the continuum of HIV care.

Create effective community-based programs for substance abusers with HIV/AIDS! Substance abusers are the fastest-growing population of people with HIV/AIDS in the US--and one of the hardest to reach and treat. Evaluating HIV/AIDS Treatment Programs offers new strategies for providing care for this vulnerable population. The programs evaluated and discussed in this volume were funded as part of the DHHS Health Resources and Services Administration through its Special Projects of National Significance Program. Collectively known as the SPNS Cooperative Agreement, these 27 projects represent a diverse group of organizations with a common goal: to improve the health, quality of life, and access to health care for traditionally underserved populations living with HIV/AIDS. Evaluating HIV/AIDS Treatment Programs reports in detail the efforts of several community-based HIV/AIDS organizations in the SPNS program. You will learn how these organizations provide high-quality care for persons with HIV who are unlikely to obtain it in the traditional hospital-based service system. This volume offers specific, proven strategies designed to overcome the linguistic, cultural, racial, and economic barriers that make it difficult for some sick people to get the health care they need. It also offers specialized medical care models that work within the context of a continuum of services in a medical clinic. Evaluating HIV/AIDS Treatment Programs also highlights other aspects of the Cooperative Agreement projects, including: a study of end-stage AIDS care an overview of the HRSA HIV/AIDS Bureau SPNS Cooperative Agreement grant initiative a study of conceptual issues in implementing program evaluation in real-world community organizations discussion of the online Knowledge Base that summarizes and disseminates information from the Cooperative Agreement projects studies of ways to reach and care for specific populations with HIV/AIDS, including women, Latinos, Haitians, adolescents, and rural people This valuable volume offers solid data on treating people who are all too often neglected by the medical community even before they contract HIV/AIDS. The programs and ideas presented in Evaluating HIV/AIDS Treatment Programs can be applied to other community-based health initiatives and clinics offering medical care to underserved and vulnerable populations. This essential resource deserves a permanent place on their bookshelf of any physician, administrator, or policymaker working in the fields of HIBV/AIDS, epidemiology, public health, or substance abuse. Visit the book's website at http://www.TheMeasurementGroup.com/drugs_and_society.htm