This project is a supplement to Synthesizing Best Practice to Accelerate Access to Emerging HIV Prevention Modalities. The parent project applies an implementation science approach to support the federal Ending the HIV Epidemic ?protect? goal by developing biobehavioral infrastructure (i.e., empirically rigorous knowledge, guidelines, tools) that will support expansion of effective PrEP delivery programs and promote health equity in the dissemination of emerging biomedical HIV prevention strategies. This supplement is designed to conduct collaborative, implementation science research that will both enhance EHE activities at HRSA-funded health centers and develop a unified set of practice-informed, program-level metrics to facilitate comparison of implementation progress across settings and jurisdictions. The supplement is a collaboration with the Southeast AIDS Education and Training Center (SE AETC), which is a HRSA-funded agency focused on training, technical support, and practice transformation in the eight states that comprise the Southeast region. In collaboration with SE AETC, this supplement will collect data from five clinics in the Southeast region that received HRSA funding for HIV prevention under HRSA 20-091, and will compare these data to those collected from ten clinics that receive funding for HIV prevention programs through a different SE AETC initiative. The supplement combines the practice and community-focused expertise of the SE AETC with the research and implementation science expertise of the parent project, in order to achieve the following specific aims: (1) Specify a unified set of process and outcome metrics most relevant for both program implementation and evaluation; (2) Operationalize a set of unified metrics to measure other critical components of HIV prevention implementation logic models; (3) Develop and pilot a web-based, uniform data collection and management system for these unified metrics that would automate reports and visual representation of program performance with minimal burden on partner clinic sites; and (4) Examine the association among determinants, implementation strategies, mechanisms, and outcomes across partner clinical sites in order to better understand how and under what conditions HIV prevention programs most effectively achieve desired outcomes. The proposed project has the potential to have a significant impact, not only on data collection and analysis at the partner clinical sites, but also for larger data harmonization and implementation science collaboration between NIH and HRSA. Our project focuses specifically on the Southeast region of the U.S., which bears a disproportionate burden of new HIV infections in the country. This type of practice-driven implementation science research is vital to supporting federal agencies in the data-driven, strategic decision-making process necessary to sustain the impact of the EHE investment.
This supplement project is designed to conduct collaborative, implementation science research that will both enhance EHE activities at HRSA-funded health centers and develop a unified set of practice-informed, program-level metrics that would facilitate comparison of implementation progress across settings and jurisdictions. Our project focuses specifically on the Southeast region, which bears a disproportionate burden of new HIV infections in the country. This type of practice-driven implementation science research is vital to supporting federal agencies in the data-driven, strategic decision-making process necessary to sustain the impact of the EHE investment.
